In April 2001, the PHRMG published a report on the phenomenon of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, entitled “Criminal Negligence? Settler Violence and State Inaction During the Al-Aqsa Intifada.” We concluded both that settler violence against Palestinians is a very real problem, and that the Israeli Army and all law enforcement agencies, whose legal duty it is to protect Palestinians under their control, have failed dismally in this regard. We further concluded that the impunity granted settlers who engage in criminal acts is a main cause of the continuation and escalation of settler violence.

 It became clear that Palestinian victims of settler attacks – even those resulting in death - are reluctant to have contact with the police because their complaints are routinely ignored or dismissed, or because they fear and/or distrust Israeli law enforcement. The family of Tahrir Rezeq, for example, told us that they would not give the police the names of Palestinian eyewitnesses to their son’s murder, because they believed that instead of investigating the killing, the police would arrest the eyewitnesses and charge them with having thrown stones at the settlers. However, as we concluded in our report, the failure of Palestinians to file complaints provides the police with an excuse not to open investigations and not to bring the settler criminals to justice.[1]

It was in order to impact upon this situation that the PHRMG’S Settler Violence Hotline was established in July 2001. The goal of the project was first to encourage and assist Palestinian victims assert their right to file criminal complaints and then to pressure the Israeli police to comply with its duty to investigate the complaints and apprehend the criminals. We hoped to compel the Israeli police not only to investigate incidents of settler violence when they are reported, but also to make the reporting procedures more accessible. We also hoped to convince the Palestinian public of its responsibility to hold the Israeli authorities accountable to their human rights obligations. To accomplish these objectives, PHRMG established a 24-hour a day accessible Hotline to respond to complaints of imminent or ongoing violence,[2] as well as past incidents of violence.

At around the same time, Audrey Bomse, an experienced human rights attorney from the United States, came to the PHRMG to analyze the disparate treatment of Palestinian and Israeli homicide defendants in the Israeli criminal justice system.  Her report, entitled  “Separate and Unequal: Disparate Treatment of Palestinians and Israelis who Kill,” which concluded that each and every Israeli law enforcement agency – the army, the police, the prosecutor and the judiciary – shares responsibility for the failure to administer justice and protect Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, reinforced our previous conclusions concerning settler violence and the immunity it enjoys.  At this point, the PHRMG decided to launch its Settler Violence Legal Unit, to represent the interests of Palestinian victims of settler violence by monitoring the response of Israel law enforcement authorities and exerting pressure upon them to investigate criminal complaints, apprehend, indict and prosecute the criminals, wherever appropriate.

Since its inception, the Settler Violence Legal Unit has received 160 complaints from Palestinian crime victims. We were unable to open files in 82 of the cases, because the victim was unwilling to file a complaint with the Israeli police. PHRMG identified the following reasons for this phenomenon:

• Common belief, often based on prior experience, that the complaint would be ignored or dismissed by the Israeli police;
• Fear and/or distrust of Israeli law enforcement;
• Inaccessibility of police stations to Palestinian complainants, either because they are located within settlements, where Palestinians fear further victimization, or because of the distance and number of Israeli security checkpoints between the police station from the victim’s place of residence;
• Belief that filing a complaint is a form of cooperation or, even worse, ‘collaboration’ with Israeli authorities.
• Lack of awareness of how, where or with whom to file a complaint.[3]

While PHRMG’s efforts to overcome the self-imposed constraints on filing criminal complaints have been largely successful, we have not had equal success overcoming the systemic constraints imposed by Israel, which will be discussed in the next section.

 files have been closed by the PHRMG, most because there was no way of identifying the perpetrator(s) and therefore no way to appeal the police file closing. Before closing many of those files, however, the PHRMG communicated with the police to inquire why more sophisticated forensic investigative methods, such as fingerprinting, were not used[4].

Below is a breakdown of the types of offenses involved in the cases of settler violence reported to the PHRMG:

·        9 involve murder/manslaughter, including one hit-and-run motor vehicle “accident”

·        45 involve assault, including 4 hit-and-run “accidents”

·        70 involve both assault and property damage/theft/land confiscation

·        29 involve property damage and/or theft

·        7 involve land confiscation

The vast majority of our caseload comes from Hebron: 110 out of 160 cases. That is both because the level of violence in Hebron is constantly high and because the PHRMG has had a consistent presence in Hebron from a long time. 15 cases originated in Nablus, 12 in Jerusalem and 11 in Bethlehem.

Since the establishment of the Hotline/Legal Unit, and partly as a result of PHRMG intervention, _______ cases have been referred to the prosecutor, some only after we convinced the authorities to reopen closed files. To date, only 3 of our cases have actually been prosecuted and only 1 settler has been sentenced (to an inadequate sentence, grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime).[5] The PHRMG expects this number to increase substantially in the future, as our efforts have made complaint filing processes more accessible to our clients and our monitoring of police investigations have forced them to be more thorough.

In addition to following up on individual cases, PHRMG has published a Know Your Rights handbook for victims of settler violence and has conducted several community based legal workshops, particularly in Hebron, to inform Palestinians of their rights and advise them how to implement those rights to the greatest extent possible. This community legal education does far more than explain to people how to file and pursue criminal complaints in order to obtain some modicum of justice. It raises awareness in the Palestinian population of its inalienable human rights and the need to fight to defend them. This consciousness will strengthen Palestinian civil society and political culture and lead to increased participation in the process of nation building and aid the development of a broad national democratic movement.