B'Tselem report: Crowd Control: Israel's Use of Crowd Control ...

The official police procedure strikes what appears to be an appropriate balancebetween law enforcement considerations and safety considerations. In practice,however, the procedure is often breached: Security forces frequently use pepperspray in the West Bank in complete contravention of orders.Observations by B’Tselem, video footage, and testimonies by demonstratorssprayed with pepper spray all confirm that police officers routinely use thespray without advance warning. Often, the spray is directed at people standingin a group or at ranges much shorter than a meter and a half. Most worrying,B’Tselem has ample documentation of Border Police using pepper spray againstdemonstrators who were not acting violently nor even passively resisting arrest.In many cases, protesters were sprayed while either standing quietly nearpolice officers or arguing with them. These people were not detained and thereappeared to have been no intention of detaining them, nor were they warned ofthe intention to spray them. In addition, police have been documented sprayingdemonstrators who were passively resisting arrest by, for example, sitting onthe ground and linking arms with other demonstrators.42