During the month of November, Yesh Din documented 27 incidents of violence against Palestinians and damage to their property in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Among them were 17 cases of violence or damage to property by Israeli civilians, 13 involving the olive harvest, including the theft of olives from hundreds of trees on the lands of the villages of Awarta, Qaryut, Burin, Jit, Deir Sharaf, Far’ata, Al Janiya, and Al Mughayyir.
Yesh Din also documented seven cases of violence and damage to Palestinian property by soldiers, including a case in which soldiers fired stun grenades at two youths from Azzun, aged 13 and 16, and then beat and detained them for several hours. In another case, soldiers asked a Palestinian who was driving in his car to stop and when he exited the vehicle, they beat him. “We documented 3 cases of violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem. In one case, a Palestinian was violently assaulted by a large group of people. In another case we documented how a group of private security guards for the Jerusalem light rail train beat a Palestinian resident of Ein Rafa as he was waiting for his train.”
Yesh Din filed two appeals; one was filed against the decision of the Judge Advocate General’s Office to close an investigation file against a soldier who shot and killed 11-year old Khalil Anati in a Hebron refugee camp in August 2014. The second appeal was filed against the police’s decision to close an investigation file in a case in which two Palestinian farmers were brutally beaten by Israeli civilians four years ago next to the illegal outpost Givat Hare.
In 12 of the incidents reported for November, the victims informed Yesh Din that they did not wish to file a complaint with the Israel Police or with the Military Police Criminal Investigations Division for fear of further harm or due to a lack of trust in the law enforcement authorities, and that filing a complaint would fail to bring them justice.
For more information about why Palestinians refrain from complaining, see the publication Avoiding Complaining to Police by Yesh Din at: http://bit.ly/AvoidingComplaining
