Most settler violence complaints by Palestinians are closed without indictment

Documentation of the assault on a Palestinian family near Al-Maniya

Hagar Shezaf reports in Haaretz on 18 January 2025:

Most cases of nationalist crime by Jews against Palestinians over the past 20 years were closed without indictment, according to data collected by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din for the years 2005 – 2024.

Yesh Din monitored 1,701 investigation files on nationalist offenses against Palestinians in the West Bank, which do not reflect the full scope of the phenomenon. About 94 percent of the cases under investigation were closed without an indictment, and only 3 percent of the cases in which indictment was filed led to a full or partial conviction.

At the same time, research by Yesh Din shows that over the past decade, there has been a decline in the percentage of Palestinian victims who are willing to file police complaints about nationalist violence.  This trend has intensified in the last two years, following Itamar Ben-Gvir’s appointment as national security minister: In 2024, 66 percent of the victims who participated in the study reported that they do not wish to file a complaint with the police (101 cases out of 153), compared to 27 percent of the victims who responded this way in 2021.

Among the prominent cases in recent years that did not result in indictments is the settler rampage in Hawara February 2023, during which Sameh Aqtash was shot and killed in the nearby village of Za’tara.  One of the victims, a resident of Hawara whose store was torched during the riot, filed a police complaint the same day, with the help of Yesh Din.  In September 2023, he was informed that the case had been closed. The investigation file his lawyers received only contained a confirmation that the complaint had been filed and two correspondences in Arabic, and he was never called in for questioning.

The police behaved in similar fashion last July when Palestinians were attacked by settlers in Khirbet al-Nahla, near the settlement of Efrat.  “We were in our farmland, and the settlers attacked us,” Suhib, one of the victims, told Haaretz.  “They destroyed the fence and put their sheep on our land. They shot me in the leg, beat me on the head with a club and sprayed me with pepper spray. Many of us were injured. My uncle needed to have a surgical metal plate implanted, and they broke my cousin’s leg.”

He estimated that there were around 20 settlers, and later soldiers and additional settlers arrived. He said that he filmed the attack, but the settlers whose face weren’t covered stole his phone. “We haven’t returned to the land since; we’re not looking for trouble,” he added.  Suhib said that, later, he and others who were assaulted were hospitalized and some filed complaints with the Beitar Illit police about a week later.

The police did not contact anyone following the complaint, and the case was closed after three months. The investigation into the vandalism at a café in As-Sawiya was also closed without an indictment, and the file only has confirmation that a complaint was filed and two documents from the Palestinian police. The police did not even note that the complainant had a security video.

The police Judea and Samaria District has long been known for its poor performance in cases of nationalist crime against Palestinians: suspects are not arrested, policemen tardily arrive at the scene, investigations are not opened unless there is a formal complaint (even if the police are aware of the crime), and Palestinians filing complaints face various difficulties. For example, there are not always investigators who speak Arabic, and the police sometimes refuse to let Palestinians enter police stations.

A Palestinian from the Bethlehem area told Haaretz that when he went to file a complaint about violence in December, he waited for hours outside the Beitar Illit station, and was finally told that he could not be received because there were no Arabic-speaking investigators at the station. The man, who was repeatedly assaulted by settlers, was forced to return and was only able to file a complaint later.

Since the outbreak of the war, there have been several serious incidents in which no indictments were filed, such as the clash next to Aqraba on April 15. Settlers and soldiers went to the village outskirts and began confronting Palestinians who were grazing cattle on their land.

Two Palestinians were shot to death in the incident, and their bodies were brought to Israel for autopsies; a police source said at the time that that would help the investigation. Nonetheless, no indictment has yet been filed and the IDF Spokesperson’s Office say that, following the incident, a joint police–military police investigation was opened and is ongoing.

No indictments were filed in the pogroms in the villages of Duma and Al–Mughayyir in April, following the murder of teenager Benjamin Achimeir by a Palestinian from Duma.

That is also the case in the pogrom in Jit in August, during which houses were set on fire, and a Palestinian youth was shot dead. In some cases, detainees were placed under administrative detention, which does not require an indictment, but permits three to six months of detention.

Recently, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that he would stop using such detentions against settler.

When the police close cases, they must state the grounds for doing so. Yesh Din states that 64.4 percent of cases examined in the past 20 years were closed because no suspects were found. 19.5 percent were closed for lack of evidence, 11.2 percent because of the absence of criminal guilt, and the reset for miscellaneous reasons.

One case was closed because the criminal was not found in the assault on a Palestinian family near Al-Maniya, next to which the outpost Mikne Avraham was established in 2024. “We were in the pasture with the sheep, and the settlers came with their sheep to the lot,” said the family’s father, Ahmed Tarawa.

“Then the army came, and in the presence of the army, they beat me with a baton. I told the police that the soldiers were there and that I had pictures of the assailants.” He said that the settlers also beat one of his children in the incident.

The family has since been assaulted numerous times; in the worst incident, in December, settlers torched a farming equipment shed. This assault was also documented, and Tarawa filed a complaint with the police. To date, no decision has been taken whether to file an indictment.

Alongside the data, Yesh Din says, “Settler violence has become an additional executive arm of Israel’s settlement enterprise in the West Bank, which is geared toward land takeover and dispossessing Palestinians of their land. Moreover, the decades-long systemic policy of ignoring crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank has given way to open encouragement and support for ideologically motivated crime since the establishment of the current government.”

The police declined to respond to Haaretz’s questions about the cases cited here, but provided a general response, “Every complaint filed with the police is investigated and handled by the best investigators in the Judea and Samaria District on the basis of the seriousness of the case, in cooperation with Shin Bet investigators and subject to the areas of responsibility.   The investigation is still ongoing in the some of the cases presented, and we naturally cannot go into details. Some of the cases presented were closed after all the required investigative actions were performed and in accordance with the findings of the investigation and the evidentiary basis. We note that the Judea and Samaria District and the Shin Bet will continue to investigate the cases thoroughly and professionally with the objective of reaching the truth.”

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