in the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin for a lengthy period of time.84 This prohibition is completely illegal according to international law. Israeli Policies and Practices One of the most common ways through which Israel disperses protests and demonstrations is using force against participants. The Basic Principles establish in their second General Provision that in order to conduct law enforcement operations, Israel is responsible for developing and equipping its forces with different weapons that allow for a differentiated use of force.85 This includes the provision of a wide range of non-lethal weapons in order to decrease the use of weapons capable of causing death or injury to the protesters.86 Under international standards, law enforcement officials “are required to be trained in, to plan for, and to take, less-than-lethal measures – including restraint, capture, and the graduated use of force”.87 Moreover, the Israeli forces should be properly equipped with self-defensive equipment such as shields, bullet-proof vests and helmets, and bullet-proof transportation so as to increase the threshold of necessity to use more dangerous weapons on protesters.88 The Basic Principles also add in its fourth General Provision that those responsible for carrying out law enforcement operations should, as far as possible, use non-violent means to stop the protest before resorting to the use of force. Force and firearms must only be used if other methods were proved ineffective.89 These provisions are rarely followed by Israel, neither within their own regulations nor in practice. In the majority of protests, stone-throwing is the most common way of resistance. In some instances, stone-throwing is combined with ‘molotov cocktails’ or homemade explosive devices. In other occasions the demonstrations do not engage in confrontations with the Israeli soldiers, and are still suppressed and dispersed using force, often lethal in nature. Although stone-throwing by protesters rarely poses any imminent threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers or others, the Israeli forces often respond with excessive use of force against unarmed protestors including; teargas, sometimes fired from M-16-style weapons to reach further distances or fired 84 B’Tselem, Background on demonstrations in the territories, last update: 2 January 2013. Available at: http://www.btselem.org/demonstrations 85 Basic Principles, op. cit., General Provision 2 86 Ibid. 87 UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, op. cit. (A/HRC/10/24/Add.6), page 22 88 Basic Principles, op. cit., General Provision 2 89 Ibid., General Provision 4 28