Are security forces helping Jewish rioters attack Palestinians, MK asks

• Published date: 13 October 2021
• Author: TOVAH LAZAROFF
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"Have the authorities closed their eyes to this, let alone cooperated with the [Jewish] rioters?" Rozin asked the committee.

There have been 400 documented cases of such violence so far this year, and 500 incidents last year, Rozin said.

FADC chairman MK Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid) said the phenomenon of Jewish civilian violence against Palestinians needs to be "eradicated," adding that such actions harms both the standing of the State of Israel and the settlements in Judea and Samaria.

Ben Barak asked representatives of the security forces that were present whether "the IDF reaction would be the same" in responding to an incident in which one of their vehicles was stoned by someone who was Jewish or Palestinian.

Brig.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman, who heads the IDF Operations Division, said that all such responses are situational and depend on the degree to which the soldiers consider that it is a life-threatening situation. Sgt. Ziv Sagi, head of the Police Investigation Department, said that 189 Palestinians and 22 Israelis were arrested during West Bank clashes last year.

In addition, Sagi said that 242 investigatory files were opened against Palestinians for disorderly conduct during riots and 115 such investigation files were opened against Israelis. He did not offer any other context to the data to explain if these were riots that involved Palestinians and settlers, or ones that solely involved Palestinian clashes with the IDF.

Ben Barak held the meeting in the aftermath of a number of violent incidents by settlers and Jewish extremists against Palestinians, including a group attack last month against the South Hebron Hills village of Khirbat al-Mufaqara in which a three-year old Palestinian boy suffered a head injury.

Rozin said that what bothered her about that incident was the presence of IDF soldiers during the attack.

The meeting took place among reports of settler extremist violence against security forces, including the stoning of a Border police vehicle on Monday in the Yitzhar settlement in which a Border Police officer was injured.

The meeting itself had been called to debate the security services' response to extremist Israelis.

Right-wing politicians, including Religious Zionist Party MKs Orit Struck and Itamar Ben-Gvir...