“You shall appoint magistrates and officers for your tribes in all the settlements and they shall govern the people with due justice”

Deuteronomy 16: 18 Oct2002-3.htm

 On December 16 2001, a letter was sent to the PHRMG from SHAI Police Headquarters. The letter, or better described, the curt note, said: “With reference to your letter regarding the murder of Mohammed Shalash, we hereby advise that a file was opened by the Binyamin Police and was closed by the Jerusalem District Attorney on the 17.6.2001.”

 On December 17, 2000, Mohamed Shalash, an 18 year old high-school student, along with several classmates, stood waiting for a taxi to take him home from school; perhaps they were throwing stones at settlers cars on the bypass road below.[1]  A van with several settlers passed by the boys, stopped, turned around and returned to where the boys stood. The boys started to run away, most running in the direction of the town of Abud. Mohammed, however, ran in the opposite direction, towards the nearby fields.  Two settlers exited the van and one shot Mohammed in the forehead, at close range, killing him immediately. Approximately three hours later, the Israeli army arrived with an ambulance, and removed Mohammed’s body to Abu-Kabir Hospital, where he was autopsied. The police immediately apprehended two suspects.

 Mohammed Shalash’s murder would appear to be a simple case to solve. There were eyewitnesses to the crime. An autopsy was performed[2] and the coroner’s report established that Mohammed had been shot at close range. Most importantly, two suspects from the Neve-Tsuf settlement were apprehended by the police in connection with the murder and their statements and photographs appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper ‘Ma’ariv.’ The two – Yair Ben-Ami and Asher Amram - admitted being at the scene of the crime, at the time of the shooting, claiming that they had been stoned by the boys, and therefore had shot in the air “in self defense” and to “frighten” the stone-throwers.[3]  Nothing, it seems, was missing for prosecution: there were suspects, there were eyewitnesses, there was evidence and there was a motive.

 A month and a half after the murder, PHRMG Executive Director Bassem Eid wrote to SHAI Police requesting information on the status of the Shalash murder investigation. Almost two months later, the SHAI Police replied: “The circumstances of Mohammed Shalahs’s death are being investigated by the Binyamin Police Station. The case is still under investigation.” Several months later, the PHRMG again wrote to SHAI police, asking for an update on the status of the investigation. It was then that we received the one-line note from SHAI Police, announcing – without providing a reason, as required by law [4]- that the case had been closed. The letter sent by the PHRMG in January 2002 to the prosecutor, requesting that the case be reopened, has, to date, remained unanswered.

 Thus, what appears to be an open-and-shut case involving the most brutal crime possible, eventually quietly disappeared into the black hole of the Israeli law enforcement system in the Occupied Territories (OT). Unfortunately, this case is not unique. The vast majority of settler crimes committed against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip bear no consequences for the criminals: they are not investigated by the police and/or they are not prosecuted by the State Attorney. Settlers appear to be immune from punishment and Israeli law enforcement authorities in the Occupied Territories do the least they can to protect Palestinians from settler violence, while still maintaining some semblance of law and order. It is the aim of this report to both describe the various types of settler crimes handled by the PHRMG Legal Unit and to show the systematic manner in which Israeli law enforcement authorities ignore these crimes which, under both domestic Israeli law and international law, they are obliged to prevent and punish. We will also indicate the steps taken by the PHRMG to impact upon this unjust situation, by exerting pressure so that the criminals are prosecuted and future violence is deterred.