Israeli probes into deaths of Palestinians often go nowhere

JALAZON REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AP) — The Israeli military has opened investigations into 24 potentially criminal shootings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza over the past year.

Yet in what critics say is a pattern, none of the cases yielded convictions or indictments, and in most instances, the army hasn’t interviewed key witnesses or retrieved evidence from the field.

B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights group, grew so frustrated with the system that in 2016 it halted its decades-long practice of assisting military investigations.

In the last eight years, nearly 200 criminal investigations into the shootings of Palestinians have secured just two convictions, according to B’Tselem.

A high-profile case in which a soldier was caught on video fatally shooting a wounded Palestinian attacker lying on the ground, resulted in a reduced sentence of nine months.