Investigations that are opened are not pursued seriously. As a result, some two-thirds of investigations are closed. Israeli officials have leveled stinging criticism against the Police and the military for their law enforcement failures. Critics have included the 1982 Karp Commission, the Shamgar Commission established following the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Attorney General Eliyakim Rubenstein. Unfortunately, these repeated criticisms have fallen on deaf ears.
Israeli authorities are thereby complicitous in the on-going violence and vandalism.
An international protection force is something Gush Shalom has been calling for some time. Today's raid into Beit Jalla was an escalation of this war of attrition. Meanwhile a group of professors collected signatures of 350 Israelis - prominent or just concerned individuals on the following text which we forward. Dear friends and concerned citizens, The enclosed petition, signed by nearly 350 Israeli intellectuals, academics and concerned citizens, calls for an immediate deployment of an international peace keeping force in the occupied territories in order to restore elementary safety and living conditions to the battered civilian Palestinian population in the region. We believe that under present conditions a temporary international intervention may be the only practical means now available to end the daily killing, wounding, and suffering of civilians, including children and old people, and to facilitate the resumption of talks.