Vast Majority of Israeli-on-Palestinian Crime Claims Routinely Unsolved – Rights Group
Nov 14 2014 / 6:26 pm http://www.
Israeli
police have proven vastly inept at solving reported crimes against the
Palestinian population: a staggering 92 percent of complaints end up
closed with no justice served, according to the Yesh Din human rights
group.
The
organization, which also took part in assisting many of the victims,
oversaw the status of some 1,045 complaints filed to the Samaria &
Judea (SJ) District Police in the period between 2005 and 2014, and came
to the conclusion that only 7.4 percent had actually led to criminals
being caught – 1 percent less than in previous reports.
All
of the complaints had to do with Israeli civilians suspected of
attacking Palestinians and their property. They include shootings,
assault and battery, arson, stone-throwing, death threats, crop theft
and others.
The
report, which is the latest in a series of investigations, exposes the
Israeli police’s rampant and systematic disregard for due process where
anti-Palestinian crime is concerned.
“Despite
their legal obligations, the reality is that Israeli security forces in
the West Bank frequently participate or stand idly by while violence
against Palestinians is being committed. Behind this indifference is a
pervasive culture of impunity that is maintained by the various Israeli
authorities operating in the West Bank,” the group writes on its
website.
“Most
cases of violent crimes against Palestinians not only go unpunished –
but often are completely ignored by the authorities,” it continues,
stating that this constitutes a blatant violation of the rights of
Palestinians residing in the West Bank, not to mention international
humanitarian law.
Despite
the revamping of the SJ police force in 2013, the human rights group
actually registered an increase in racially-motivated crime.
Of
the 159 cases currently being investigated by Yesh Din, 106 have been
closed by the police, resulting in only two convictions. About 80
percent of those have been filed away under ‘criminal unknown’; seven
closed on lack of evidence; in two it was ruled that no crime was
committed. Yesh Din launched an appeal to reopen nine of the latter
cases.
The organization suspects that nearly 90 percent of that caseload was dropped by the police unjustifiably.
Noa
Cohen, who oversees data gathering at Yesh Din, told Haaretz that the
statistics are a testament to the shallow nature of “high-flown
statements about the fight against nationalistically-motivated crime”
and that “the new department has not improved by one iota the
law-enforcement authorities’ ability to investigate and prosecute
criminals suspected of harming Palestinians, and ideologically-motivated
crime in the West Bank continues to serve as a tool of intimidation and
the takeover of land.”
Although
the police have offered no comment on the current report by Yesh Din,
the organization has been vocal on the issue for a number of years and
believes this sort of crime is an endemic problem affecting the West
Bank.
Another
report dating back to 2006, titled ‘Semblance of Law’, sharply
criticizes the dynamics existing in the law’s handling of the problem.
“Violence
by Israeli civilians against Palestinian civilians and their property
has been a daily occurrence for many years in the Occupied Territories,”
it says in the introduction. “Serious failures exist at all stages of
the law enforcement process,” the organization said, referencing
“serious physical and bureaucratic obstacles.”
(RT.com)
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