Yesh Din

Yesh Din—whose name means “There is a law” in Hebrew—is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2005. It identifies itself as an independent, non-partisan organization registered in Israel and subject to Israeli law, with volunteers working alongside professional staff, including lawyers and human-rights experts.[1] Its expanded name is “Volunteers for Human Rights.”[2]

The group describes its work as operating on two levels: helping individuals whose rights it says have been violated, and using the cases accumulated through that work to identify structural problems and press for change. Its stated areas of focus include law enforcement concerning Israeli settlers and other civilians, criminal accountability for Israeli security personnel suspected of offenses against Palestinians, and disputes involving Palestinian land and access to it.[1]

Its methods combine casework, research and public communication with legal action directed at Israeli authorities. It says it documents and disseminates information about human-rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and uses public and legal advocacy to seek change. The organization identifies the occupation as a main source of the violations it addresses and says it seeks to end it; these are Yesh Din’s own analysis and objectives.[1]

The group’s public role is visible in individual petitions and long-running statistical projects. It has represented Palestinian landowners in construction and access disputes and challenged military procedures and rules of engagement.[2][6] It has also tracked police and military handling of complaints. Its numerical findings concern particular files and incidents it monitored or administrative data it obtained, rather than a comprehensive census of every offense or investigation.[4][7]

Yesh Din was established in March 2005 by members of Machsom Watch; accounts also identify Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard among its founders.[8][3] Its expanded name, “Volunteers for Human Rights,” reflects its volunteer roots, while its subsequent model has included both volunteer participation and professional staff.[1][2]

The organization’s early work included documenting complaints concerning alleged offenses by Israeli civilians against Palestinians. A June 2006 study reviewed complaints relating to alleged offenses from 2002 to 2006. Yesh Din found that more than 90 percent of complaints were closed without indictments. It reported that 96 percent of trespassing investigations, all investigations of property offenses and 79 percent of assault investigations ended without indictments.[9]

Yesh Din also criticized the handling of complaint procedures. Its concerns included complaints and testimony being written in Hebrew rather than Arabic and police rarely conducting scene visits, identification lineups, eyewitness interviews or checks of suspects’ alibis. It estimated that about 5 percent of complaints were lost and apparently never investigated.[9][10] These were Yesh Din’s findings and criticism as relayed in State Department reporting, rather than a separate determination that every individual complaint had been mishandled.

In 2007, Yesh Din assisted Palestinians in submitting 83 cases of alleged violence by Israeli civilians to Israeli police.[9] It also appealed the closure of the investigation into the death of 10-year-old Abir Aramin, who was fatally wounded while leaving school during clashes between Israeli Border Police and Palestinians. The prosecutor had closed the investigation for lack of evidence; Yesh Din’s appeal cited 14 witnesses and Israeli pathologist Chen Kugel and alleged that Aramin had been shot with a rubber-coated bullet while running away. No further action had been taken by the end of 2007.[9]

The organization extended its scrutiny to military-court procedure. A report released in December 2007 criticized what Yesh Din described as de facto limits on public access to military courts, unpublished verdicts, the absence of an explicit right to a presumption of innocence, delays in delivering indictments, restrictions on timely trials and limits on attorneys’ ability to provide effective counsel.[9] Its report “Backyard Proceedings” drew on volunteer observations, interviews, research and Israel Defense Forces data and argued that military courts had serious fair-trial shortcomings.[11]

Among 8,854 cases against Palestinians concluded in military courts in 2006, 26 defendants—0.3 percent—were acquitted. Volunteers observed 38 hearings on requests to extend detention until the end of proceedings and calculated an average hearing time of one minute and 54 seconds. They also reported that proceedings were conducted in Hebrew, which many Palestinian defendants and some lawyers did not speak fluently, and judged interpretation to be partial or poor in 35 percent of the hearings observed.[11]

The Israel Defense Forces disputed the report’s methodology and interpretation. It cited anonymous interviewees, an incomplete database and what it described as inaccurate readings of data and legal questions. The IDF said military courts met professional standards and that hearings in which the defense opposed detention lasted substantially longer than the aggregate figure implied.[11] The reported figures and the IDF’s response therefore represent competing assessments of the court system and the evidence used to evaluate it.

Yesh Din’s work combines individual representation with monitoring and advocacy. Its stated model uses individual cases to identify recurring institutional problems, while its public materials include legal analyses, data sheets and reports on law enforcement. NGO Monitor, a critical advocacy organization, describes the group’s work as including High Court petitions, monitoring law enforcement concerning Israeli civilians and security forces in the West Bank, publishing statistics on offenses it calls ideologically motivated, and briefing foreign diplomats.[1][3]

Examples include petitions seeking access to military-court records and challenges to restrictions on Palestinians travelling in Israeli vehicles in the West Bank.[3] In 2010, Yesh Din petitioned the High Court of Justice against 13 Israeli quarrying companies, alleging that they used Palestinian natural resources in the West Bank. The largest company named was Hanson, controlled by HeidelbergCement. The petitioners argued that an occupying power could use land resources for its own needs only to a limited extent and for the needs of the occupied population; researcher Dalit Baum characterized the use of quarry materials in construction in Israel as bordering on plunder.[12] These were the petitioners’ claims, not a judicial finding in the cited material.

Yesh Din has also challenged construction and land arrangements in particular cases. In the Givat HaUlpana area of Beit El, the organization petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Palestinian landowners, asking the state to enforce orders stopping construction and demolishing structures already built. The petitioners argued that the land was registered to Palestinian owners, that no government decision authorized the construction and that planning was insufficient to issue permits. They also argued that the Civil Administration had known about the construction as early as 2006. The state agreed that the construction was illegal, and the court instructed it to evacuate the houses by July 1, 2012.[2]

A separate series of disputes concerned land near Homesh. Yesh Din petitioned in 2013 on behalf of residents of the Palestinian village of Burqa who said they owned land in the area. Following the petition, the military cancelled a land-seizure order and Palestinians were permitted to access and work their land. Residents said they still could not do so because of the settlers’ presence. In 2019, Burqa residents and Yesh Din petitioned again, seeking access after repeated requests to the military and enforcement authorities.[13]

In a later Homesh case, Yesh Din represented Palestinian landowners seeking the removal of an outpost from their private land. The High Court said the original petition’s central demand had been met after the old yeshiva was removed from the private land and the landowners regained access. The justices said claims about a new yeshiva and the altered circumstances went beyond the original petition and could be raised separately; they also noted that routes to the new location still crossed private land. Yesh Din argued that the new yeshiva was also illegal and criticized the decision as demonstrating what it called “apartheid rule” in the territories.[14] The court’s reasoning and the organization’s political characterization of the outcome are distinct.

Another major legal intervention came in April 2018, when Yesh Din joined the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Gisha and HaMoked in petitioning the High Court over military rules of engagement at demonstrations on the Gaza border. The petitioners argued that the rules permitted live fire in situations where demonstrators did not pose an immediate mortal threat. The state maintained that the rules complied with Israeli and international law and described the events as part of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. On May 24, 2018, the Court unanimously dismissed the petitions, accepting the state’s position.[6]

The organization has also monitored the military’s Fact Finding Assessment mechanism, which gathers information about incidents for the Military Advocate General, who decides whether a criminal investigation is warranted. Yesh Din reviewed incidents involving injuries and deaths during the “March of Return” protests from March 2018 through late 2019. It reported that 59 percent of 231 referred incidents, covering 140 fatalities, remained under review, with most of those fatalities still in the mechanism’s “quick” assessment three years later. Yesh Din expressed skepticism that investigations could be thorough and effective after such delays.[7] The figures and criticism were attributed to Yesh Din in State Department reporting.

A central strand of Yesh Din’s work is tracking how complaints concerning alleged violence or property offenses against Palestinians are handled. Its figures have changed over time because reports cover different periods, types of incidents and sets of files. They should not be treated as a single continuous series or as totals for every police investigation in the West Bank.[4][15]

A 2015 article reported that Yesh Din tracked 1,045 Palestinian complaints against Jewish settlers from 2005 to 2014, of which 7.4 percent resulted in indictments. For 2013–2014, more than 150 complaints resulted in only two indictments by the Judea and Samaria Police Division.[16] Separately, an INSS study based on Yesh Din documentation reported that 63 percent of violent incidents over an unspecified preceding decade took place near illegal outposts. It described approximately 46.5 percent of incidents as physical attacks on Palestinians and approximately 44.6 percent as property damage, alongside cases involving land confiscation. The cited passage does not specify the period or methodology.[17]

A 2010 State Department report relayed Yesh Din’s finding that more than 90 percent of investigations into offenses against Palestinians carried out by Israeli settlers were unsuccessful. It also reported Yesh Din’s monitoring of 97 complaints concerning damage to Palestinian-owned trees: police closed every case, citing either inability to identify perpetrators or insufficient evidence.[18]

For files opened from 2005 to 2019, Yesh Din reported that police failed to investigate 82 percent and that 91 percent of all investigation files were closed without indictment.[19] In a 2021 fact sheet, it reported that police failed to make arrests in 81 percent of files from 2005 through 2021 and that 92 percent of all files were closed without indictment.[20]

Other reports covered distinct samples. Police figures obtained through a freedom-of-information request showed that 369 cases concerning Israeli violence against Palestinians were opened during 2018–2020 and 11 indictments were filed. For comparison, 363 cases concerning Palestinian politically motivated crimes against non-Palestinians were opened, with 70 indictments.[21] The comparison does not by itself establish that the cases in the two categories were equivalent in nature or handling.

A 2022 report attributed to Yesh Din a data sheet covering 1,597 investigation files opened after complaints to the organization. Yesh Din reported that 93 percent of West Bank law-enforcement files were closed without indictment and that 3 percent of files concerning ideologically motivated offenses by Israelis against Palestinians led to convictions. It also assessed that lack of enforcement and deterrence enabled persistent offenses.[22] That conclusion was Yesh Din’s interpretation of its data, not a court finding.

For 2005–2023, Yesh Din monitored 1,664 investigations into violence by Israeli settlers and other civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank. It reported that 93.7 percent of cases were closed without indictment, that 81 percent of closed cases were not investigated, and that 54 percent of 107 indictments resulted in full or partial convictions.[23] A separate account described the period as extending through September 2023 and clarified that the files were cases in which Yesh Din had received power of attorney from an alleged Palestinian victim, not the total number of investigations opened by police. Of 1,615 concluded investigations, 1,513 were closed without indictment and 107 resulted in indictments; 50 indictments ended in some form of conviction. Among 1,437 cases where police supplied a reason for closure, 64 percent were closed because the offender was unknown and 20 percent because of insufficient evidence.[24]

Yesh Din characterized those results as evidence of systemic failure. The distinction between the organization’s conclusion and the reported file outcomes matters: the figures describe its monitored cases, while the systemic-failure assessment is its interpretation.[24] A CAMERA article reported a total of 1,293 files monitored from 2005 onward, with 36 percent concerning violent offenses, 46 percent property offenses, 14 percent attempts to take over Palestinian land and 4 percent other offenses. It said a corrected 8 percent indictment rate applied to 1,252 cases monitored from 2005 to 2019 across those categories, not only to violent crimes. The two totals and periods are not interchangeable.[15]

The organization’s 2005–2024 data sheet reports monitoring 1,701 investigation files, excluding East Jerusalem. It says 93.8 percent of concluded cases ended without indictment; indictments were filed in 109 cases, of which 53 resulted in a full or partial conviction. Yesh Din states that these files are not a count of every incident in the West Bank.[4] For January 2023 through September 30, 2024, it documented 328 incidents of harm to Palestinians and said victims chose not to file police complaints in 60.6 percent. In 2024 alone, it reported no complaint in 101 of 153 incidents, or 66 percent, attributing reluctance in part to suspicion and distrust of Israeli authorities.[4]

Yesh Din’s monitoring has included alleged offenses by Israeli soldiers as well as civilians. For 2017–2021, the organization says Israeli military information obtained through freedom-of-information requests, together with its own monitoring, showed that the military system was made aware of 1,260 alleged offenses by soldiers against Palestinians. It reported 248 criminal investigations and 11 indictments, three of them involving incidents in which Palestinians were killed; the 11 indictments amounted to 0.87 percent of the 1,260 cases.[25]

Other reporting gave broader figures for 2016–2024: Palestinian residents filed 2,427 complaints against IDF soldiers, 552 led to investigations and 23 to indictments. Of 696 complaints involving a Palestinian killed as a result of IDF action, 195 investigations were opened and two led to indictments. These aggregate figures came from the military, while Yesh Din separately said its analysis of 185 cases in which it was involved from 2016 to 2025 found that the initial decision whether to open an investigation took an average of 213 days.[26]

An individual case illustrates the time periods involved in military investigations. Yesh Din represented a Palestinian man identified as Belal, who was shot in the back by soldiers in January 2020 while visiting family in Deir Nidham. He filed a complaint through the organization on March 9, and the Military Advocate General decided to open an investigation in September. The investigation ended in March 2021; a decision on whether to indict came in October 2023, when the case was closed without an indictment. Yesh Din appealed, and the appeal was considered after 10 months and rejected. The organization alleged that evidence gathered in the investigation showed the soldier’s account was false.[26]

Yesh Din has also published findings about the location and forms of alleged violence. A study presented at a Knesset conference examined 1,256 incidents collected from 2012 through July 2021, including attacks on people, damage to property and agriculture, and land seizures. It found that 796 incidents, or 63 percent, occurred near unauthorized outposts; 584 involved attacks on people, 560 involved property damage and 6.3 percent involved land seizures.[27]

The study identified Yitzhar, Adei Ad, Esh Kodesh, Havat Ma’on and Givat Ronen among prominent locations. It reported approximately 66 attacks on people and 52 property-damage incidents in the Yitzhar area since 2012, about 40 incidents at Havat Ma’on, about 70 at Adei Ad and about 116 at Givat Ronen. Residents of Givat Ronen and Esh Kodesh disputed the portrayal, accused the organizations behind it of bias and said it omitted attacks against Jews. Yesh Din responded that its data covered incidents it documented and that other organizations and security authorities held additional records.[27]

The study said Palestinians filed fewer complaints over time despite a rise in attacks and attributed the trend to distrust of law enforcement and a belief that police rarely apprehended perpetrators.[27] In 2026, Yesh Din’s documentation process was described as collecting testimony from people who said they had been harmed, filming videos in real time, gathering other documentation and filing formal police complaints. A resident said he had given the organization photographs and videos identifying alleged attackers and vehicle license plates, but that no action followed; this was the resident’s account.[28]

For the olive-harvest period from September 27 through October 22, 2026, Yesh Din reported 672 incidents across 194 Palestinian communities. It categorized 135 as physical violence, 106 as blocking Palestinians from harvesting olive trees, 176 as theft or property damage and 49 as tree vandalism. It said more than 23 percent occurred while the IDF was present or involved. The figures were described as drawing on field-researcher documentation, verified field information and cross-checks of public reports and accounts. Yesh Din’s executive director characterized the violence as part of a systematic government policy of displacement and ethnic cleansing; that is the organization’s contested allegation.[29]

A report published in August 2026 said 62.6 percent of settler-violence incidents against Palestinians in the first half of 2026 occurred in Areas A and B. It contrasted this with 2025, when about 67.6 percent of incidents reportedly took place in Area C and 32.4 percent in Areas A and B. Yesh Din research-department head Yonatan Kanonich interpreted the figures as showing a relationship between outposts moving deeper into Palestinian areas and violence, and alleged that settler and soldier violence displaced Palestinians. These are the organization’s interpretation and allegations.[28]

Yesh Din’s significance lies partly in its sustained use of individual cases to pursue broader legal and institutional questions. Its petitions have produced concrete outcomes, including an evacuation order at Givat HaUlpana and restored access to land near Homesh.[2][13] Its datasets have also appeared in official reporting and have influenced public debate, while critics such as NGO Monitor dispute their categories, methodology and interpretation.[23][3]

Yesh Din describes itself as independent and non-partisan and says it does not accept direct or indirect donations from Israeli or Palestinian government bodies. It lists institutional supporters that include the European Union; the governments or embassies of France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; the New Israel Fund; Oxfam; and private donors. The organization says Israeli law requires it to detail donations from foreign governments above NIS 20,000.[1]

Funding has also been a subject of public and political scrutiny. Information compiled by staff of the Justice Ministry’s Registrar of Associations in 2016 listed Yesh Din as a volunteer human-rights organization and said it received 4.7 million shekels—88 percent of its budget—from foreign state entities, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union.[30] These figures are distinct from Yesh Din’s description of its funding policy.

A 2024 Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs article placed Yesh Din in what it called an NGO “lawfare” network and listed the European Union, NGO Development Center and Norwegian Refugee Council as its top European funders, without providing amounts. The description of the group as part of a “lawfare” network is the authors’ political characterization, not a neutral institutional classification.[31]

The organization received the New Israel Fund UK human-rights award in November 2017. Yesh Din said the award recognized its work to protect the human rights of Palestinian residents of the West Bank. Executive director Lior Amihai and co-founder Ruti Keidar attended the London event.[32]

Yesh Din’s work concerns contested political and legal questions, and its reports often combine reported data with conclusions about institutional conduct, policy and legal obligations. Its statistics should be understood in light of their stated scope: monitored files, obtained administrative data or particular incident sets, rather than a comprehensive count of all relevant cases. NGO Monitor disputes Yesh Din’s interpretation of law-enforcement statistics, arguing that its categories and comparisons can be misleading and are not comparable with those used by Israeli authorities or other jurisdictions. That is NGO Monitor’s assessment, offered by a critical advocacy organization.[3]

Among Yesh Din’s most prominent legal and political claims is its July 2020 position alleging that the crime against humanity of apartheid was being committed in the West Bank. NGO Monitor reports the allegation, while an INSS article states that Yesh Din published a report in July 2020 saying Israel maintained an apartheid regime and situates it within what the article’s authors describe as a broader campaign against Israel. The characterization is politically and legally contested; the cited material does not establish it as an uncontested legal finding.[3][5]

Yesh Din has also argued that Israel was unofficially adopting the doctrine associated with the Levi Report that the law of occupation does not apply to the West Bank. An INSS summary of Yesh Din’s report “From Occupation to Annexation” says the organization viewed changes in government norms and institutions as reflecting adoption of that doctrine without a formal decision. Yesh Din argued that the resulting unclear legal regime permitted actions inconsistent with the law of occupation and that Israeli policy aimed ultimately to facilitate formal annexation of Area C. These are Yesh Din’s assessments of government policy and legal doctrine.[33]

A critical Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs article presents Yesh Din’s advocacy in political terms and discusses its 2013 report “Lacuna: War Crimes in Israeli Law and Court-Martial Rulings.” The article characterizes the report as calling Israel’s legal system “defective” and says it was funded by the European Union under a grant described as seeking “to change Israeli policy vis-à-vis criminal accountability of Israeli Security Forces Personnel.” It provides no grant amount. It also presents the report as part of NGO challenges to the adequacy of Israeli legal proceedings under the Rome Statute’s complementarity principle. The descriptions of Yesh Din as political advocacy or “lawfare” reflect the article author’s interpretation.[31]

Disagreement has also concerned Yesh Din’s monitoring of military courts and particular incidents. The IDF disputed the methods and conclusions of “Backyard Proceedings,” defended military-court procedures and challenged the organization’s use and interpretation of data.[11] In the Homesh litigation, the High Court’s stated reason for dismissing the original petition was that its central demand had been met after the old yeshiva was removed from private land; Yesh Din criticized the decision and argued that the new yeshiva was also illegal.[14] In both cases, the organization’s assessment and the position of the relevant Israeli institution should be distinguished rather than treated as the same finding.