Settler attack investigation ends

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Footage of West Bank attack

Israeli police in the West Bank have closed an investigation into an apparent attack by Jewish settlers on Palestinian shepherds.

The attack was captured on film and broadcast by the BBC in June 2008.

Israeli police said that because the attackers were masked it has not been possible to identify the individuals.

The video showed four masked men carrying baseball bats attack three Palestinians, close to a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

A spokesman from the Israeli police told the BBC that they identified seven suspects during their investigation.

'Jewish settler attack' on film

Four of them were arrested, but they could "not find the evidence that they were responsible for the crime", and that once the police could not tie the suspects to the event the case was closed.

They said that if more evidence came to light, there was a possibility of reopening the case.

Thamam al-Nawaja, a 58 year-old Palestinian woman, along with her 70 year-old husband, and one of her nephews, were herding their flocks when they were badly beaten by four masked men wielding baseball bats.

The incident took place in the south of the West Bank near the Susia settlement.

The attack was filmed by a relative, who had been given a camera by the human rights group B'Tselem as part of its Shooting Back project.

B'Tselem had handed video cameras to Palestinians in troubled areas so that they could document abuses against them.

Mrs Nawaja told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that she couldn't understand how the police did not catch the men who beat her.