JERUSALEM, April 13, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli police has failed to investigate ideologically motivated offenses committed against Palestinians, the Israeli rights group Yesh Din said on Thursday.
It said that data it and the police have collected “reflect a trend of protracted failure regarding investigations into ideologically motivated offenses committed against Palestinians.”
Yesh Din, which monitors Israeli human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, said out of 289 cases of ideologically motivated offenses it has tracked between 2013 and 2016, only 20 led to indictments against offenders and 225 cases closed upon completion of the investigation without any indictment, of which 183 files were closed after police has failed in the investigation.
It said that establishment in 2013 of the Nationalist Crime Unit of the Judea and Samaria (the Israeli name for the occupied West Bank) Police with the declared mission of protecting Palestinians from nationalist crime has not led to an increase in solving cases of this kind.
Likewise, it added, according to official data provided by the Israel police, in 2015 the Judea and Samaria Police Department opened 280 investigation files regarding suspicion of nationalist crimes committed by Israeli civilians.
“These investigations led to 59 indictments in 2015, but it is important to note that in only four of these cases the victim of the offense was a Palestinian,” said Yesh Din.
“The fact that the law enforcement authorities manage to put suspects on trial for nationalist crimes when the victims are not Palestinians demonstrates that these figures are not inevitable, but rather a product of policy,” it explained.
“This policy ultimately leads to a reality in which less and less Palestinian victims of crimes by Israeli civilians are willing to file complaints with the Israel police,” said the Israeli rights group, explaining that in 33 percent of ideological offences documents by Yesh Din since 2013, the victims chose not to file a complaint with the police.
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