For two decades, Yesh Din has documented offenses committed by Israeli civilians – settlers and others – against Palestinians or their property in the West Bank. Yesh Din also monitors the investigations the Israel Police opens following such incidents to assess how willing Israeli law enforcement agencies are to protect Palestinians in the West Bank from harm, as required under international and Israeli law.
Two decades of monitoring of the outcomes of investigations into ideologically motivated crime against Palestinians leaves no room for doubt: The State of Israel continually breaches its obligation to protect Palestinian residents of the OPT. The data indicates that the Israeli authorities are unable or unwilling to enforce the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians and their property in the OPT, granting them immunity for acts of violence, including assault, beating, use of firearms, stone-throwing, threats, arson, theft, harming crops and different types of vandalism.
The settlers’ systemic use of violence, sowing fear and terror among Palestinians and disrupting their daily lives is designed to push Palestinians out of their land. As such, it serves as an additional executive arm of Israel’s settlement enterprise in the West Bank, which is geared toward land takeover and dispossessing Palestinians. Moreover, the decades-long systemic policy of ignoring crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank has given way to open encouragement and support for ideologically motivated crime since the establishment of the current government.
Over the past two years, since the establishment of the government, the scope and severity of settler violence have intensified significantly. The government’s stated intention to expand the settlement enterprise in the West Bank, measures amounting to de facto annexation of the West Bank, and Itamar Ben Gvir’s appointment as the minister in charge of the Israel Police have sent a clear message that the Government of Israel supports and backs organized settler violence and considers it a means for achieving its goals.
Yesh Din’s figures, based on 20 years of monitoring thousands of investigations, indicate that the systemic failure to enforce the law on Israelis in the West Bank began long before the current government, and has been going on for at least two decades. This is a longstanding and consistent failure, indicative of a deliberate Israeli policy that normalizes ideologically motivated violence against Palestinians, supports it and benefits from its outcomes.

Yesh Din monitoring 2005-2024: Key figures

• Approximately 94% of cases end without an indictment
Since 2005, Yesh Din has monitored 1,701 police investigation files into offenses committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem). 93.8% of the concluded cases closed at the end of an investigation with no indictment filed. The vast majority of the files close on grounds indicative of failure by the police to name suspects or collect evidence.

• Just 3% of the investigation ended with a conviction
In the 1,701 investigations opened since 2005, indictments were filed in 109 cases (6.6%) and 53 of them resulted in a full or partial conviction. In other words, only 3% of investigations into ideologically motivated crime against Palestinians in the West Bank led to a full or partial conviction. This low conviction rate has – for at least two decades – signaled that law enforcement agencies do not take settler violence seriously, enhancing the perpetrators’ sense of immunity and encouraging the recurrence of these acts.

• Sharp drop in complaints
In addition to monitoring investigations, over the years, Yesh Din has documented hundreds of additional incidents of settler violence in which the Palestinian crime victims chose not to file a complaint with the police.
Suspicion and distrust towards Israeli authorities, which are part of the occupation regime that has been oppressing Palestinians for more than 57 years, have always been fairly prevalent. This trend has intensified over the past two years, ever since the current administration was sworn in. Between January 2023 and September 30, 2024, Yesh Din documented 328 incidents of harm to Palestinians. In 60.6%, the crime victims chose not to file a complaint. In 2024, the rate climbed to 66% (101 of 153 incidents documented by the organization). In most cases, individuals cited mistrust in the Israeli authorities and the investigation process as the reason for not filing a complaint, some expressed fear that filing a complaint would harm them or result in their Israeli work or entry permit being revoked.