On Thursday, July 3rd, 2025, at 8:30 PM, an urgent petition was submitted to the duty justice of the High Court of Justice, Justice Alex Stein, requesting a provisional and immediate remedy due to the escalation of violent incidents in Ma’arajat — a Palestinian village located in the Jericho region in the southern Jordan Valley.

This village has for years endured violence, harassment, and theft at the hands of local settlers, the police, and the army. A second request — to order the immediate evacuation of the settlers — was submitted at 11:30 PM, when the violence intensified. Dozens of settlers invaded homes, broke into the school, vandalized property, looted, stole, lit bonfires, and threatened residents, who, with no choice left, decided to give up their hold on the land, packed their few belongings, and abandoned their homes.

If I were suspicious, I might remind Your Honor that even in 1930s Germany, some found legal sophistry and bureaucratic justifications to legitimize and turn a blind eye to the grave crimes being committed.

But since I do not know you or your legal philosophy personally, I will only note that naïveté and innocence are rare commodities in our region — and your rulings thus far in petition 10151-07-25 suggest you possess both in abundance.

In your initial ruling in the petition — which, as mentioned, sought an immediate and urgent remedy — you denied the request, arguing that there is no point in issuing a remedy that merely reminds the state of its general duties in criminal and public order matters. You set a deadline for the state’s response for July 4, 2025, at 12:00 PM.

You stated that there is no reason to intervene, as “the duties of the authorities responsible for law enforcement and public order are clear and well known; therefore — when there is a reasonable concern of serious criminal acts — it is their duty to intervene and restore order".

Indeed, in a democratic state, the authorities are entrusted with enforcing the law regardless of religion, race, or gender. But you and I both know that this is not the case in the occupied territories, where one law applies to the Palestinian inhabitants and another to the Jewish lords of the land. You further added that “a provisional remedy that merely reiterates this general duty adds nothing and is unnecessary".

Your ruling on the second request that night repeated the same rationale. After receiving the state’s response, you ordered the petitioners to respond by July 7, 2025 — as if you and they had all the time in the world, while a forced transfer was underway. Perhaps. And yet, allow me to press you further, Your Honor: Have you been to the occupied territories recently? Have you witnessed how soldiers, the Civil Administration, and the police treat the Palestinian population? Human rights activists? Journalists? Have you spoken to any of them?

If not, have you perhaps watched military footage of the riots in Huwara? In Taybeh? In Duma? In Ras al-Ein? In Beita? In Kafr Malik? Do these images support your claim that there is no need to reiterate the general duty? Is this how, in your view, the law enforcement authorities fulfill their duty to maintain public order?

Allow me to add, Your Honor, that I have personally called the Jordan Valley hotline, the police, and the army multiple times to report breaches of public order and criminal acts occurring before my very eyes. Many of my friends did the same. The authorities’ responses were mostly suspicion, dismissal, and disregard. In the few cases when army or police forces did arrive on the scene, they never spoke to us. Instead, they pointed their weapons at us while huddling with the attackers — the very ones who had just assaulted us, broken into homes not their own, vandalized property, looted food, spilled water, and threatened us and the Palestinians we were trying to protect.

In such cases, appeals, repeated requests, and pleas were of no use. Not even the video evidence we had of the crimes made any difference.

In the end, you were right. A provisional, urgent remedy was no longer needed at that moment The community was expelled. The cleansing was completed.

I have never encountered a more tangible expression of the phrase The wheels of justice grind slowly".”