The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed an official complaint with the Military Advocate General, Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, on Tuesday, August 26, calling for the army to launch a criminal investigation into Central Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth, on suspicion of committing war crimes in the West Bank. Bluth, as part of his role, is responsible for the occupation army activity in the West Bank.
Bulldozers operated by Israeli settlers and soldiers uproot olive trees near the village of Al-Mughayyir, in the occupied West Bank, August 23, 2025 (Photo: Avishay Mohar/Activestills)
This would be the first complaint submitted by an Israeli organization against a senior officer on allegations of war crimes in the West Bank since the Gaza War began, according to the ACRI’s statement. “For months, lawlessness in the West Bank has made war crimes and crimes against humanity part of daily life,” ACRI argued, adding that army had begun boasting about its actions, expanding the “destructive doctrine of ‘no innocents'” from Gaza to the West Bank. This comes after the occupation army issued a defense last Sunday of Bluth’s decision last week to clear a massive number of trees to achieve better security oversight of the area near Al-Mughayyir village, south of Ramallah.
On Friday, a convoy of bulldozers rolled into the olive groves of Al-Mughayyir, a Palestinian village east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Most were civilian machines operated by settlers, with several armored military bulldozers in support. By Sunday, thousands of olive trees, many of them decades old and belonging to local families, had been torn from the ground.
The order came from Maj. Gen. Bluth, and officially the destruction was part of a manhunt for a Palestinian gunman who had allegedly opened fire on Israeli settlers grazing sheep on the village’s land, wounding one before fleeing. The army claimed the uprooting was meant “to clear potential hiding places.”
But Bluth himself soon revealed that the true aim lay elsewhere, “Every village and every enemy must know that if they carry out an attack against the residents [settlers], they will pay a heavy price.” Bluth also declared during a briefing at the site. “They will experience a curfew, they will experience a siege, and they will experience shaping operations.”
“Shaping operations” is the occupation army’s euphemism for a policy of physically destruction of areas where Palestinian resistance has emerged. Earlier this year, the tactic was applied in refugee camps across the northern West Bank, where soldiers demolished hundreds of homes, displaced tens of thousands of residents, and leveled structures to ease military access, leaving deserted three camps, one in Jenin and two in Tulkarem. ACRI asserted that “war crimes and crimes against humanity have become a daily matter in the West Bank.”
