In a moment of truth and courage, Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon admitted that the field investigation into the close-range shooting of Palestinian Iman al-Hams ended in failure. “Our inability to find the full truth in the field investigation is a dismal failure,” he said. In addition to launching a scathing internal critique, the Chief of Staff announced that despite recently published reports of serious behavior on the part of Israeli soldiers in the territories, “We should not take field investigations out of the army's purvey.”

We can assume that without the intense media scrutiny of the “confirming the kill” incident, the Israeli army would have accepted the findings of the preliminary investigation and the case would have been closed. The falsehoods uncovered in the investigation, conducted by the area commander, would have become the absolute truth as far as the IDF is concerned, and none of those involved would have stood before a court.

This incident—like that of the shooting of a wounded Palestinian wanted man and many other cases—embodies the problematic nature of leaving military investigations under the sole authority of the Israeli army. The situation in which army officers are responsible for investigating their comrades, with no outside supervision or oversight of the investigation, is extremely dangerous. It allows the army to ignore or accept at face value the murder of innocents, attacks and humiliations of the civilian population, and the loss of purity of arms.

To change the conduct of Israeli soldiers—particularly given the sensitivity of the situation, in which the army controls a hostile civilian population—it is not enough draft codes of conduct, and hold workshops or other educational activities in the army. Making a real change requires the army to take the courageous decision to forgo its own investigations, charging them to an outside independent, objective party.

Just as the police do not investigate themselves—that's why we have the Ministry of Justice's Police Internal Affairs Bureau—the army, too, must stop investigating its own men and turn the job over to the an outside unit, whose mission will be finding the truth and drafting recommendations against those involved in cases of disobeying orders and instructions.

It is impractical to strip the army of all investigative power, but an outside unit can be created that would focus on the difficult, inevitable frictions between the army and the civilian populace. It would only investigate those incidents in which Israeli and Palestinian civilians were injured as a result of IDF activities.

In contrast to the every soldier's feeling that what he is doing in the field is subject to criticism, withdrawing the army's investigating authority will tangibly improve the credibility of the investigations and the findings. This will also allow a clear line to be drawn between cases in which soldiers acted properly and cases in which soldiers unnecessarily attacked civilians.

The widespread attacks on innocents and the moral decline of the Israeli army affect all of Israeli society, transforming it into a violent, extremely dangerous society. The lack of values does not stay behind the Green Line; service in the territories has an impact on every soldier, even after he completes his service and returns to civilian life. Giving soldiers discretion in their treatment of the Palestinian population necessarily leads to violent behavior, even inside Israeli society. It leads to more incidents of violence in the home, on the sports field, and on the roads.

Without establishing a strong, effective, and independent deterrent body, soldiers will continue to understand all the fine statements issuing from the military establishment about the purity of arms and respect for humanity as simply recommendations, not something they are obligated to put into practice. The IDF's credibility will gradually be eaten away, and Israel will be hard pressed to defend the image of its army before the world.

If the Chief of Staff truly wants IDF history to remember his name, not only for his success in fighting terrorism, but also his success in preserving the ethical, civilized nature of the army, he must take the authority to investigate attacks on civilians from the hands of the army.

The author is the director-general of Peace Now.