Vigilante attacks in wake of Palestinian terror
The Foreign Ministry said that Cohen "completely condemned the incidents where [Israeli] citizens took the law into their own hands, and said the government would employ all means necessary."
(TIMES OF ISRAEL) – The White House is extremely concerned about settler violence in the West Bank, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday.
Blinken also said in a call that Washington appreciates the condemnations of vigilante attacks by settlers on Palestinians expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Cohen and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, but more must be done, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
The Foreign Ministry said that Cohen “completely condemned the incidents where [Israeli] citizens took the law into their own hands, and said the government would employ all means necessary.”
In the wake of a Palestinian terror attack last Tuesday outside Eli settlement that left four Israelis dead, hundreds of settlers rampaged inside Palestinian towns and villages, setting fire to homes, cars, and even opening fire in some cases, between Tuesday night and Saturday.
One Palestinian was killed last Wednesday in unclear circumstances.
Since the beginning of the year, Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank have killed 24 people, including last week’s victims.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday ahead of this week’s Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday and stressed the need to fight terrorism and incitement, following a string of deadly attacks on Israelis in the West Bank.
Herzog also condemned vigilante attacks by Israelis on Palestinian civilians in the wake of the past week’s rampages in Turmus Ayya and other West Bank locations.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gallant spoke with senior Palestinian Authority official Hussein al-Sheikh regarding recent incidents in the West Bank, including the settler attacks on Palestinians, his office said.
According to a readout from the Defence Ministry, Gallant told al-Sheikh that Israel “views the violence used by extremist elements against Palestinian citizens in recent days with severity, and emphasised that Israel will work to bring the perpetrators to justice”.
Cracks in the government over vigilante violence by Israelis were apparent during a Tuesday meeting called by Netanyahu to discuss the issue, according to Channel 13 news.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told Gallant that his conversation with al-Sheikh was an “apology to a terrorist”.
“He’s a convicted terrorist who sat in prison for a decade and we are calling to make nice to him?” asked Ben Gvir.
“We must not act like our enemies and make the excuse that the Arabs are doing it, so we can too,” retorted Gallant.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his condemnation of the attacks, while again lumping the rioting together with other recent unrest rather than issuing a standalone rebuke.
“We are a country of laws and this applies everywhere – in the Golan, Judea and Samaria and the Ayalon,” Netanyahu told the Knesset, also referring to Druze rioting over a wind farm project in the Golan Heights and to anti-government protesters blocking Tel Aviv’s main highway during months of demonstrations against the judicial overhaul plan.
The settler riots over the past week have drawn international censures and also been condemned by security chiefs, who issued a joint statement – after another attack over the weekend – denouncing the violence as “nationalist terror”. That denunciation, in turn, has drawn fire from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, one of whom likened the heads of the military, Shin Bet and police to the mutinous Russian mercenary group Wagner.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been high across the West Bank for the past year and a half, with the military carrying out near-nightly raids, amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
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