In a new report issued Wednesday, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira lambasted the Israel Police for failing to implement the conclusions drawn from its botched handling of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenegers, which led to a war in Gaza that summer.
Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel were abducted by Palestinian terrorists while hitchhiking near Hebron on June 12, 2014. Their bodies were discovered several weeks later.
The abduction was carried out by a Hamas cell in Judea and Samaria, exacerbating tensions between Israel and the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip and leading to the 50-day clash dubbed Operation Protective Edge.
It later emerged that after the three teens had been abducted, one of them had called the Israel Police from the terrorists' car, but the operator dismissed the call as a prank. The police blunder elicited extensive criticism and was supposed to have sparked a comprehensive protocol overhaul.
But according to the report, the police have taken only minor steps to address the incident, dismissing a number of officers. The report says that although the Judea and Samaria emergency call center now has more operators, they have not undergone the necessary training.
This undercuts police activities throughout the region, Shapira said. On top of that, procedures for handling calls have not been updated for the past 16 years.
"The procedures have become meaningless," the report says.
Shapira also criticized the fact that the Judea and Samaria police have their own mechanism for investigating clashes with Palestinian rioters that result in deaths, rather than being subordinate to the Justice Ministry's Police Internal Investigations Department.
In a separate report, Shapira condemned the Israel Defense Forces' Hannibal Protocol, the order to combat units to use overwhelming force to prevent a soldier from being abducted, even at the risk of killing that soldier.
The protocol was used most recently in the 2014 Gaza conflict, following the abduction of Israeli soldier Lt. Hadar Goldin in Rafah. The Palestinians said the protocol led to heavy civilian casualties and Israel later determined that Goldin had been killed in battle. Goldin's remains have not been recovered, and an investigation into the troops' actions is still underway.
The IDF introduced a revised version of the Hannibal Protocol last year.
But Wednesday's report said the protocol was unclear about "the value of an abducted soldier's life." It said different units of the military had differing versions of the protocol.
The report also said the order did not "explicitly" mention the need to respect two key principles of international law: distinguishing between military and civilian targets, and using proportional force against a threat. It recommended that the principles be clearly reiterated as part of any future procedure.
The IDF said Wednesday it welcomed the comptroller's report and would study its findings. It said a "significant portion" of the recommendations had already been addressed, and a new set of procedures for soldier abductions was approved in early 2017.
