Islam Times - Israeli settlers' attacks on Palestinians go unpunished: Rights group

Islam Times - A human rights group has condemned the Israeli police’s "indifference" to settlers' attacks on Palestinians, saying nearly all assaults end without any indictments.

The Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, released the data in a report on Monday, saying 94 percent of such cases go unnoticed and that in the few cases that indictments were made, the convictions led to “very light” punishment.

The NGO also said that assaults against Palestinians are not “isolated incidents,” and that "this brand of violence is part of a sophisticated, wider strategy designed to assert territorial domination over West Bank Palestinians."

According to the rights group, Israeli forces in the West Bank frequently participate or do not intervene while violence against Palestinians is being committed.

The report comes as Israeli forces as well as settlers regularly engage in violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Earlier this week, a pregnant Palestinian woman suffered miscarriage after a group of Israeli settlers attacked and beat her up in the center of al-Khalil (Hebron) in southern West Bank.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem), in 1967.

Settlers, mostly armed, almost regularly attack Palestinian villages and farms and set fire to their mosques, olive groves and other properties in the West Bank.

Israeli settlements are considered illegal by much of the international community because the territories were captured by the regime in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.