in Khan Younes is responsible for this difference, since it held, on average, as many as 53 hearings per day. This Court is divided into two panels, due to its heavy workload, since it covers three governorates (Khan Yunis, Rafah and Deir Al-Balah). The high number of hearings held by the Khan Younes court came at the expense of hearings average duration, which lasted much shorter than in the average West Bank First Instance Court (3 minutes against 8 minutes). On average, a hearing in a Gaza Strip First Instance Court lasted half as long as a hearing in the West Bank one. West Bank First Instance Courts such as Tulkarm, Betlehem, Jenin or Nablus on average devoted 8 to 10 minutes to each hearing, longer than the average West Bank First Instance Court but in line with the average duration of hearings in the Serious Crimes Court (9 minutes). The Jericho Serious Crimes Court branch appeared to be the Court devoting, on average, the longest time to trial hearings (21 minutes). As an indicator of the courts’ overall commitment to processing cases in a timely fashion, ISTIQLAL considered the overall average daily time devoted to trial hearings. As shown in Chart 8, this indicator varied among courts. On average, First Instance Courts in the West Bank devoted approximately two hours and thirty minutes daily to court hearings, against a daily average by Serious Crimes Court branches of approximately three hours and ten minutes. On an average day, some First Instance Courts such as Nablus, Jenin and Qalqilya devoted two hours or less to court hearings. This is in stark contrast with the commitment shown by some branches of the Chart 8 - Average daily court time devoted to Serious Crimes trial hearings (minutes) Court, such as 300 Betlehem, Jericho 250 and Qalqilya, which dedicated four to 200 five hours daily to 150 court sessions. 100 Interestingly, while 50 the Qalqilya Serious Crimes Court branch 0 seemed to be the hardest-working court of all (five hours daily average), First Instance Courts Serious Crimes Court its First Instance Court devoted to hearings the least time of all courts (one hour and 45 minutes). The longer time devoted to court hearings also enabled Serious Crimes Courts to hear, on average, a higher number of witnesses (5,1 per case) compared to First Instance Courts (4,3 per case). 2. Case postponements ISTIQLAL also observed that a considerable number of monitored hearings did not result in any actual progress in the case. In the vast majority of hearings monitored Courts simply 29