Israeli police give traffic tickets to Palestinians, but no one's collecting

While authorities boast of crackdown on road rage in the West Bank, police and Defense Ministry trade blame over who’s responsible for collecting the penalties

By Jacob Magid

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27 November 2018, 8:35 pm

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Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

The majority of tickets given by Israeli police to Palestinians for traffic violations in the West Bank go unenforced because no state body has taken responsibility for collecting the fines.

As part of its campaign to limit road accidents beyond the Green Line, police release a weekly press statement that tallies the amount of tickets handed out for various traffic crimes.

According to the Public Security Ministry, under whose auspices the police falls, 45,000 fines worth tens of millions of shekels were administered to Palestinians in the West Bank in 2017. In that same year, 5,600 orders were handed out to Palestinian drivers requiring them to appear in court.

However, the Haaretz daily reported Tuesday that while tickets worth at least NIS 22 million ($5.98 million) were handed out last year, only about NIS 9 million ($2.41 million) of those fines have been paid. Consequently, the thousands of fines levied each year have not had a major impact on road rage.

The blue vehicle attempts to pass the white truck by merging into the oncoming traffic lane, nearly colliding with the approaching vehicle on Route 60 in the West Bank. (Courtesy: Avraham Binyamin)

Earlier this year, Meretz party lawmaker Mossi Raz sent an official correspondence to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan asking for clarification as to which body is responsible for collecting traffic violation fines.

The minister responded in March that while police officers are the ones who enforce traffic laws in Area C — the 60 percent of the West Bank where Israel has full control over civil and military affairs — the Defense Ministry body known as the Civil Administration is responsible for collecting the fines.

Raz subsequently reached out to a Civil Administration official with the same query. In her February response to the lawmaker, Ruth Bar said that “the issue is not under the jurisdiction of the Civil Administration.”

“The matter should be taken up with the Israel Police, who are the body responsible for handing out and collecting fines in Israel, including in Judea and Samaria (West Bank),” the defense official wrote, kicking responsibility back to the body that asserts that collecting fines is not a matter of its concern.

Meretz lawmaker Mossi Raz, pictured at the Knesset in Jerusalem on October 23, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

A defense official told The Times of Israel that Palestinians who chose to pay their fines address them to the Civil Administration, but that “the majority get away with not handing over the compensation because Israeli authorities that typically collect such penalties do not have authority to enter Palestinian towns,” the vast majority of which are located in areas A and B of the West Bank, where Israel does not maintain civil control.

Moreover, the official said that the Civil Administration has had a difficult time accessing Palestinian bank accounts, making it difficult even for those interested in paying to do so.

Raz called the situation in the West Bank “idiotic.”

“Palestinians are under occupation and are being tried under military law. They are subject to fines that the military regime does not know how to collect,” he said. “We again discover Israel’s inability to control what is happening in the occupied territories.”