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According to the provisions of International Humanitarian Law, Israel is required, as the occupying power in the Occupied Territories (OT), to protect the well-being and safety of the Palestinian civilians living in the occupied area. Israel has been neglecting that duty for decades: by the lack of IDF and Israel Police preparation to provide adequate protection to Palestinians assaulted by violent settlers, by inadequate investigations by the law enforcement agencies, and by giving light sentences to those settlers and Israeli civilians convicted of assaulting Palestinian residents. This neglect has been documented over the years in press reports, reports by human rights organizations and even in government reports.
As part of a multi-annual project called Enforcement on Setter violence in the West Bank, Yesh Din is systemically confronting the neglect of law enforcement on violent settlers, both on the individual and on the institutional levels. On the level of the individual and the community, Yesh Din closely monitors the law enforcement agencies’ processing of complaints filed by victims of settler violence, in order to further the efficiency of investigation and prosecution. This monitoring is helping Yesh Din form a full picture of the state of law enforcement on Israeli civilians in the West Bank. In the long term, Yesh Din operates on the institutional level in order to advance a genuine reform in law enforcement procedures in the OT, to ensure the State of Israel's fulfilling its obligation to defend the Palestinian residents of the occupied area.
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