Israeli authorities have arrested four people suspected of participating in a violent attack on a Palestinian village in the West Bank last week, during which one Palestinian was killed, they announced on Aug. 22.
“This was a severe terror event that included setting fire to buildings and vehicles, stone and Molotov-cocktail hurling, as well as live fire, resulting in the killing of one Palestinian and the injuring of another,” a statement by the police and the domestic security agency said.
The Shin Bet security agency and the Israeli police arrested three adults and a minor suspected of several acts of terrorism against Palestinians, the two agencies said in a joint statement.
Shin Bet director Ronen Bar warned Netanyahu in a letter Thursday that extremist settler violence has put the nation on the brink of disaster. Such violence can’t just be called “nationalistic crimes” and must be labeled Jewish terror, he said.
Israeli social media swirled with reports that Bar’s letter had accused Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of indirectly or explicitly encouraging such violence and that Ben-Gvir had stormed out of a cabinet meeting on Aug. 22 as a result.
The attackers, who village residents told reporters numbered as many as a hundred, set fires, burned homes and cars, and damaged water tankers. Video showed flames engulfing the village.
Netanyahu said he took the attack seriously. “Those who fight terrorism are the IDF (Israel Defense Force) and the security forces, and no one else,” he said last week in a post on X.
Even Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose nationalist political party represents the West Bank and who has pursued an aggressive policy of expanding areas where Jews live there, distanced himself from the incident, condemning the attack.
“The rioters tonight in Jit have nothing to do with the settlements and the settlers,” he said last week on X. “They are criminals who should be dealt with by the enforcement authorities with the full severity of the law.
“We build and develop the settlements in a legal ... manner, back the IDF in its fight against terrorism, and strongly disapprove of any manifestation of anarchist criminal violence that has nothing to do with love of the land and settlement in it.”
After the incident, Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, told Israeli public radio that the extremists who rioted in Jit were mostly not settlers from his area in the West Bank.
“We know that this is a WhatsApp group of fringe, violent youth, most of whom are not even from Samaria. I despise them like most of the country,” he said, according to the Times of Israel.
