When it comes to the Serious Crimes Court, judges took measures which contributed to the case progress, on average, in less than 20% of all hearings. only in 263 hearings. As many as 1,085 hearings were postponed without taking any measures other than setting a new hearing date. resulted in some progress towards the case’s adjudication. Again, the Tulkarm branch was the most efficient, followed by those in Hebron and Jericho. As many 90% of the hearings before the Qalqilya Serious Crimes Court branch were simply postponed. The reasons for these frequent postponements will be discussed in the following paragraph. 3. Reasons for postponements The most commonly observed reasons for postponing hearings in First Instance Courts were the failure of prosecution witnesses to appear and the Court’s failure to ensure the presence of defendants held in pre-trial detention. As shown in Chart 11, These two factors combined accounted for over 50% of postponements in the West Bank and 40% in the Gaza strip. Chart 11 - Reasons for hearing postponements (%) 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Absence of defence attorney Absence of Absence Absence of Issues with accused prosecution defence witnesses witnesses witnesses summoning Serious Crimes Court First Instance Courts West Bank Leave for Deliberation defence to by Court present evidence Other reasons First Instance Courts Gaza Another problematic factor, causing postponements in over 10% of all hearings in First Instance Courts, was failure to properly summon witnesses. Coupled with failure of defence attorneys and defence witnesses to appear, these factors account for the overwhelming majority of reasons why hearings in West Bank and Gaza First Instance Courts (85% and 74%, respectively) were unnecessarily adjourned. The same factors also affected trial hearings before the Serious Crimes Court, where absence of regularly summoned defence witnesses had a much more severe impact than in First instance courts. On the other hand, Serious Crimes Court branches were much more effective in ensuring the presence at the hearing of defendants held in pre-trial detention. First Instance Courts often 31