Families are angered by the promotion of Israeli officer accused of killing protesters to post of national police chief

Al-Jazeera – 12 July 2015

Fifteen years after Israeli police shot her 19-year-old son Ahmed in the eye, killing him instantly, Hadiya Jabareen has yet to lay his ghost to rest.

Instead, the mother of six has watched Bentzi Sau, the commander who oversaw the police operation in which Ahmed and 12 other demonstrators died, rise rapidly through the ranks.

His success has come despite a judicial-led inquiry into the killings in 2000 that harshly criticised Sau and recommended that he be barred from promotion for at least four years.

The inquiry found he had used – for the first time inside Israel – an anti-terror sniper unit, directing live fire at demonstrators belonging to Israel's large Palestinian minority who posed no threat to his officers.

Jabareen, aged 54, said Sau's career triumphs have been a bitter pill to swallow. This month she suffered a further indignity when the Israeli cabinet approved Sau's appointment as acting police commissioner, making him the highest-ranking police officer in the country.

"Sau's promotion is like seeing my son killed all over again," she told Al Jazeera. "He was executed by the police and there has been no justice since, only continuing insults like this one to the families."

Use of snipers

Sau is now the leading contender for the permanent post, which must be filled by September.

That will be just weeks before commemorations mark 15 years since the October 2000 protests, which erupted across the Galilee region in solidarity with the second Intifada – then raging close by in the occupied Palestinian territories.

An official inquiry, led by a supreme court justice, Theodor Or, concluded in September 2003 that Sau had ignored directives from his superiors and taken a contingent into the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm to quell protests there. At the time, he had been the northern commander of the Border Police, a paramilitary force that operates in Israel and the occupied territories.