violent incidents against Palestinians have proliferated, rising from 200 attacks in 2009 to over 400 in 2011. The spike in assaults on Palestinians by settlers has come despite the fact that over the same period, Palestinian terrorism fell dramatically.

According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, of 781 incidents of settler abuse monitored since 2005, Israeli authorities closed the cases on over 90 percent of them without indictment. And the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that the IDF is currently probing 15 cases, all of which took place between September 2000 and December 2011, of Israeli soldiers witnessing clashes between settlers and Palestinians and failing to intervene.

As a counter-example to your statement to the exclusiveness of the IDF in performing arrests, the US Army is banned from being used on US soil unless there’s a direct presidential order

This isn’t on Israeli soil, unless Israel chooses to annex it, in which case the Palestinians get citizenship.

Meanwhile,

By the way, your statement is incomplete, as the IDF actually has special units trained and geared to perfome [sic] (pseudo) policing duties

But I thought you just said,

Using soldiers for policing has been proven disastrous numerous times, for example in Northern Ireland.

So Israel is using a disastrous policy? Or the policy is not so disastrous?

Meanwhile, the army already plays a policing role – over Palestinians but not Israelis. That is the whole problem here! It needs to be either both or neither.

giving the military the power to arrest and trial the state’s citizens without conducting proper investigation results in a military dictatorship Egypt or Argentina style, not a happy place.

But it’s ok for that to happen to people who are ruled over by the state but aren’t citizens? You’re really not helping your case here.

As to the courts – there have been numerous cases of succesfull application by Arab residents of Judea and Samaria to the Israeli High Court of Justice

Sure there have, but that’s nowhere near sufficient. It’s actually ridiculous that they have to appeal to the highest court in the land before they can have their case heard by an independent judiciary.

Have you ever been involved in a High Court case? They take years and are prohibitively expensive. The High Court is only supposed to be for a few particularly complex cases, not every land issue that arises from an entire jurisdiction.

Are you honestly trying to defend the fact that the Civil Administration Tribunals and Appeals Committee are made-up of people from that administration?

These are actually problems that the Levy Commission identified, although unfortunately the report was buried under political pressure. There is an urgent need for reform in the West Bank administration.

As a counter-example to your statement to the exclusiveness of the IDF in performing arrests, the US Army is banned from being used on US soil unless there’s a direct presidential order allowing to do so. By the way, your statement is incomplete, as the IDF actually has special units trained and geared to perfome (pseudo) policing duties, the Border Police (compatible to the French Gendarms or Italian Carabinieri). Also, the military law that applies to Judea and Samaria allows the high command amongst other things to proclaim certain areas a closed military zone where soldiers govern the acccess and arrest those (Israeli citizens) who violate this order. These powers seem to me sufficient as giving the military the power to arrest and trial the state’s citizens without conducting proper investigation results in a military dictatorship Egypt or Argentina style, not a happy place.

As to the courts – there have been numerous cases of succesfull application by Arab residents of Judea and Samaria to the Israeli High Court of Justice against for example house demolitions or the proposed trace of the security barrier. Some claims have been granted, others rejected. So the Arab and Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are subject to the rule of law, whether they like it or not.

I don’t see a reason nor a legal possibility for using the army in law enforcement on citizens, when there’s a fully functional system of police, prosecutioners and courts of law in place.

Sure. Unfortunately, none of those things are in place in the West Bank.

The police there are extremely ineffective – there are never any prosecutions and settlers are given carte-blanche.

The prosecutors and courts? Well there are no courts, there are military tribunals and the judges are chosen from the military’s Civil Administration division and so are hardly independent.

And the Palestinians do not live in a democratic society with the rule of law. They have no vote.

More importantly, why should the military be restrained from enforcing the law? What does that achieve? They don’t have to conduct investigations etc, but it’s probably the only military in the world that has no arrest powers at all over it’s own citizens when they break the law. How can you possibly justify that?

As far as the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are concerned, they are citizens of the State of Israel and are under the responsibility of regular law enforcement units – the police. I don’t see a reason nor a legal possibility for using the army in law enforcement on citizens, when there’s a fully functional system of police, prosecutioners and courts of law in place.

Further, I doubt whether increased law enforcement on Jews (by the IDF or the police) will reduce resentment of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. It seems to me that its the Arabs who act like spoiled children, who can’t accept the fact that in a democratic society ruled by law, you have to prove your point to a judge and that such a judge is indeed independent to make a decision. And to me, the independency of the Israeli judicial system has been proved beyound reasonable doubt by numerous decisions against individual politicians as well as government policies.