Earlier this month, both the Israeli media and parts of the international press focused on remarks by the commander of the West Bank – effectively its military dictator – Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who acknowledged that the Israeli military applies different use-of-force policies towards Jewish and Palestinian stone-throwers in the occupied West Bank because, in his words, “soldiers shooting Jews carries severe sociological consequences.”But this has always been the case, and the attention directed at Bluth creates the false impression that the discrimination stems from the individual holding the position, rather than from an inseparable feature of the apartheid regime that has existed there since 1967.On the morning of February 25, 1994, the Kahanist Dr Baruch Goldstein entered the prayer hall at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron carrying an automatic weapon and carried out a massacre of Palestinian worshippers, murdering 29 people and wounding 125 others before several worshippers managed to overpower and kill him. The state commission of inquiry established in the aftermath, headed by Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, examined the circumstances that led to the massacre and heard extensive testimony regarding the racist rules of engagement then in force.In its final report, the commission cited testimony from both junior and senior Israeli military and police officers who said that even if soldiers or police officers had been present inside the prayer hall during the attack, they would have been forbidden from shooting Goldstein to stop the massacre. According to their testimony, the rules of engagement categorically prohibited opening fire on Jews – whether they were shooting at Palestinians or at soldiers and police officers themselves. The standing instruction, they said, was to try to wrest the weapon away from the Jewish assailant or to “take cover until he empties his magazine.”The army chief of staff and some senior military officers argued before the commission that this reflected a mistaken interpretation of the rules. Yet they also acknowledged that they had never issued explicit orders defining the exceptional circumstances in which shooting Jews would in fact be permitted. The commission recommended that the military publish unequivocal directives on the matter – but it never did.About 21 years later, in October 2015, a Palestinian salesman of dental equipment arrived at the Hawara checkpoint, the main southern entrance to the city of Nablus, together with his 11-year-old son. Soldiers closed the checkpoint, creating a traffic jam of Palestinian vehicles at the roundabout leading to it. Dozens of Israeli far-right activists seized the opportunity and began hurling stones at the stranded cars.After one of the stones struck the boy in the head, and after one of the Israelis attempted to puncture the fuel line with a knife and set the vehicle ablaze, the Palestinian salesman decided to abandon the car and flee on foot into the checkpoint. The Israelis then torched the vehicle, which burned completely. The soldiers and police officers at the scene did nothing to stop the violence. None of the attackers were arrested, even though they also assaulted police officers. Although the Palestinian salesman filed a complaint, investigators failed to collect footage from the military’s security cameras before it was erased.The deputy commander of the district police later described the incident in an internal memorandum. When he arrived at the scene in a police vehicle, he saw soldiers and police officers standing at the roundabout before the checkpoint. Stones and shattered glass littered the road, and some of the Israelis were armed while also holding rocks in their hands. He saw a tall Israeli smashing the windshield of a Palestinian car with a stone, as well as “an elderly Palestinian man sobbing bitterly.”When the officer exited his vehicle, the Israelis attacked him as well, yet he decided not to arrest them. He also noted that he saw a car engulfed in flames. He reported the incident over the radio and drove away.As part of the discovery process in a civil lawsuit I filed on behalf of the Palestinian salesman and his son, the state disclosed the rules of engagement that applied to Israelis in 2015 and were binding on both the army and the police (the Israeli police in the West Bank operate under military authority). Unsurprisingly, the rules contained no provision explicitly authorising the use of live fire against Jewish Israelis, even when they attacked soldiers or police officers.By contrast, in the rules of engagement I repeatedly obtained during discovery proceedings in civil lawsuits in which I represented Palestinians who had been shot by Israeli security forces, a wide range of circumstances was outlined in which soldiers were permitted to shoot Palestinians in various parts of the body – or to kill them outright – particularly in cases involving Palestinians throwing stones or other objects.What is striking is that within Israel’s sovereign territory, the police operate under entirely different rules of engagement, which do permit the use of live fire in exceptional circumstances. If an Israeli citizen – Jewish or Arab – endangers another person or a police officer, the police are authorised to shoot, and in practice they do. Only in the West Bank are security forces forbidden from opening fire on Jewish attackers.The racist rules of engagement in the West Bank reflect a reality long familiar on the ground. Soldiers and police officers kill or wound Palestinians on a daily basis under a variety of pretexts, while simultaneously allowing crowds of Israeli Jewish civilians to participate freely in pogroms, acts of terrorism and ethnic cleansing throughout the West Bank.The failure to enforce the law against Israeli Jewish terrorists, and Israel’s refusal, as an occupying power, to fulfill its obligations under international law to protect the Palestinian population from violence, are not merely the personal decisions of Maj. Gen. Bluth. They are official Israeli policy: to leave Palestinians defenseless, thereby enabling ethnic cleansing carried out through a pincer movement involving, on one side, “unofficial” forces of ideological and violent Israeli Jewish civilians and, on the other, the state’s official security forces.Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer and human rights activist.