“There’s no clear way to stop this violence”, the Jerusalem Post baldly declared in one of its recent editorials. The recent series of settler attacks in the West Bank and Israel is frightening an important part of Israeli society and even the country’s intelligence services.
“Price tag” written in Hebrew on a building in a West Bank Palestinian village
In mid September the newspaper Haaretz warned that Israel’s General Security Services (GSS, or Shin Bet by its Hebrew acronym), considered the most radical settler groups in West Bank as terrorist cells, organized to attack, observe and harass the local Palestinian population and, increasingly, Israeli anti-occupation activists and even the Israeli army. “Extreme right-wing Jewish activists in the West Bank have gone from spontaneous acts against Arabs to organized planning in the form of compartmentalized terror cells”, highlighted Haaretz, quoting a GSS report.
The recent torching of a mosque in the Bedouin Galilee village of Tuba Zanghariya last Sunday (2 October) was yet another example of how these so called “price-tags” (the name given by the Israeli media to settler reprisals to any demolition or arrest in the West Bank outposts or settlements) are not only limited to the occupied Palestinian territory. “While attacks on mosques in the West Bank have sadly become something of the norm in recent years, an attack on a mosque in an Israeli town is quite rare, particularly in a Bedouin village like Tuba Zanghariya, whose residents serve in the IDF”, explained theJerusalem Post with a touch of bewilderment.
Suddenly the denouncements and warnings repeated week after week by thousands of Palestinians and local and international human rights organisations are heard with interest in Israel. Over the last two decades, Israeli authorities have armed and sometimes trained West Bank settlers whilst granting them all possible freedom to move around, harass and even kill Palestinians.A week after the torching of the Galilee´s mosque, the Israeli authorities announced they have arrested a suspect, the first time such an announcement is made following the recent series of price-tags attacks.
Lack of proof is not the problem here. In every crime scene, the attackers leave a clear signature like “Migron forever” or “Migron = Social Justice”, in reference to Migron, the outpost on the outskirts of Jerusalem in which three homes were dismantled following a court order in early September. Similarly, the Israeli army recognized that the attackers who vandalised the Israeli military base near Ramallah following the Migron operation enjoyed the complicity of some conscripts. Although an investigation was ostensibly conducted, no one was detained.
In contrast, Israeli forces detained 20 Palestinian citizens of Israel who protested in Tuba Zanghariya in the days following the mosque attack. They were charged with firing shots in the air and setting fire to part of the village’s regional council building, a local medical installation and community center. The same happened in the West Bank village of Qusra, near Nablus, after its mosque was torched just after the Migron operation. No settlers were arrested, but Israeli forces were particularly quick to repress all subsequent local Palestinian protests.
Although warning bells are beginning to ring in the Israeli mainstream media and amongst some intellectuals, the Netanyahu government continues to ignore the rising threat. In September the GSS suggested that the Education Ministry cut all funding to the yeshiva (religious school) of the Yitzhar settlement, a Jewish colony near Nablus known for its extremism and violent ways.
A month earlier, the Israeli military had issued restraining orders on twelve settlers from Yitzhar for participating in “violent and clandestine activity” against the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The charges included setting fire to mosques, vehicles and buildings. Residents from the neighboring Palestinian village of Asira el Obilya have repeatedly denounced masked young men who invade the town with clubs and stones, intimidating the people. There is even footage of the head of Yitzhar’s yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, accompanying students who are throwing stones at the Palestinian village and its residents.
The Israeli government, a firm and open supporter of the settler’s cause, still chooses to remain in silence.
