WATCH: Israeli police let stone-throwing settlers walk away

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 9, 2014 | Edit

Israeli soldiers don’t arrest settlers. We know that. But what about Israeli police?

A couple of Jewish Israeli settlers were driving in the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron last week — where Palestinians live but only Israelis can drive — when some Palestinian youths threw stones at them, according to human rights organization B’Tselem.

The two settlers got out of their car, presumably to try and catch the stone throwers. But when they couldn’t catch them, they went after the easiest target they could find: the pair smashed a local market’s egg delivery and threw stones at parked Palestinian-owned cars, smashing their windshields, as can be seen in video provided by B’Tselem.

They were still throwing stones when Israeli police arrived. The police, army and settlement security officer, however, just let the two settlers walk to their car and drive off. The following is video shot by B’Tselem volunteers.

(The rest of the incident can be seen here.)

The Palestinians involved filed a report with Israeli police and B’Tselem said it would provide the video footage if requested. However, the police’s failure to even detain the suspected perpetrators is indicative of a wider problem.

According to human rights organizations that collect data on such incidents, Israeli police have an abysmal record in holding settlers accountable for violence against Palestinians. Yesh Din released information about such investigations last month.

According to this data, in 2005-2014, a mere 7.4 percent of investigation files led to indictments of Israeli civilians suspected of attacking Palestinians and their property, reflecting a decline of approximately one percent in the rate of such indictments.

Over the past nine years, according to their data, only 7.4 percent of investigations “led to indictments of Israeli civilians suspected of attacking Palestinians and their property.”

In the past two years, following a spate of higher-than-usual settler attacks against Palestinians, the government ordered the creation of a special police investigatory unit dealing exclusively with what Israel describes as “nationalistic crimes.”

Since the creation of the Nationalistic Crimes Unit in the West Bank, “the failure rate of the Israel Police in properly investigating ideological offenses against Palestinians has in fact worsened,” according to Yesh Din.

In 2013-2014, a statement by Yesh Din said, that nearly 90 percent of police investigations in the past two years were closed without indictment due to what the organization terms “investigative failures.”

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TEST TEST GAL Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war. The world is reeling from Israel’s unprecedented onslaught on Gaza, inflicting mass devastation and death upon besieged Palestinians, as well as the atrocious attack and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing this violence. We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies. This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized siege on Gaza. We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the fight of their lives. Can we count on your support? +972 Magazine is a leading media voice of this movement, a desperately needed platform where Palestinian and Israeli journalists, activists, and thinkers can report on and analyze what is happening, guided by humanism, equality, and justice. Join us.

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