Israel Remains Silent as Attacks by Settlers Surge
AL MUGHAYIR, West Bank — A gang of armed Jewish settlers descended from a hilltop outpost to the Palestinian village below and opened fire, witnesses said. Israeli soldiers arrived, and instead of stopping the settlers, the witnesses said, they either stood by or clashed with the villagers.
In the melee, Hamdy Naasan, 38, a Palestinian father of four, was shot and killed.
The killing in late January was the latest in a wave of settler violence. Attacks by settlers on Palestinians, their property and Israeli security forces increased by 50 percent last year and have threatened to ignite the West Bank, Israeli security officials say.
Days earlier, the Israeli authorities charged a 16-year- old yeshiva student from another Jewish settlement with manslaughter and terrorism, accusing him of hurling a two-kilogram rock that killed Aisha al-Rabi, a Palestinian mother of eight, in October as she rode in her family car on a highway.
While Palestinian and United Nations officials have condemned the violence — Nickolay E. Mladenov, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, described the shooting in Al Mughayir as “shocking and unacceptable” — Israel’s rightwing government has remained silent, wary of alienating settlers and other potential supporters in an election year.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is seeking a fifth term, is vying with other right-wing rivals for the settlers’ support. He faces bribery inquiries and his strongest political challenge in years.
“Thou shalt not murder?” Tamar Zandberg, leader of the left-wing party Meretz, wrote in a Facebook post, noting the resounding lack of condemnation from government officials. “Silence. Everyone sees the election on the horizon, and the settler lobby is stronger than any moral standard.”
By contrast, after a Palestinian home in the village of Duma was firebombed in 2015, killing a toddler and his parents, Mr. Netanyahu and right-wing leaders issued strong condemnations and said Jewish terrorism would not be tolerated.
This time the loudest voices have risen to the defense of the Jewish suspects. Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, has found itself accused by right-wing organizations of trampling on the rights of those suspected in the stoning. One legislator from the governing Likud party compared the Shin Bet to the K.G.B. Four of the youths were ultimately released.
For over a decade, radical young settlers known as the hilltop youth have practiced the doctrine known as “Price Tag,” which calls for exacting a price through violence or vandalism in revenge for Palestinian attacks on Jews or for army or police moves against rogue settlement activity.
A week before the stoning attack, a Palestinian gunman fatally shot two Israeli workers in an Israeli-run factory in the West Bank. In December, two Palestinian attacks on a West Bank road killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded a third soldier and a pregnant woman. Her baby was delivered early and died three days later.
Security officials partly attribute the surge in settler violence to the recent lifting of restrictions from some main activists. The authorities had imposed anti- terrorism measures after the 2015 Duma attack and the subsequent exposure of a shadowy militant network known as “the Revolt.” The group seeks the collapse of the state of Israel and its replacement with a Jewish kingdom based on religious law.
The Shin Bet pointed to links between the yeshiva, or religious school, attended by the suspect in the stoning case and the anti-Zionist, messianic ideology behind the Revolt. An Israeli flag scrawled with “death to the Zionists” and a swastika were found in a yeshiva dorm.
The links became apparent the day after the killing of Ms. al-Rabi, when a car set out from the settlement of Yitzhar to coach the students in how to deal with Shin Bet interrogations. The occupants included Meir Ettinger, the alleged leader of the Revolt, and Akiva HaCohen, considered an architect of the Price Tag policy. The suspect whose DNA was found on the rock denied any involvement, according to his lawyers.
The Israeli military and police are investigating the death of Mr. Naasan. Settlers say the clash started with an attack on a Jewish teenager who was staying in the settler outpost of Adei Ad over the Sabbath.
During the clash, Farraj Naasan, 53, an uncle, said Mr. Naasan was helping evacuate the wounded. “He carried the first and the second,” he said. “When he went up to get more of the wounded, he was shot.”
Mr. Naasan fell about 45 meters from the last home on the edge of the village. Another witness, Samir Abu Alia, 53, said villagers had to wait 20 minutes, until the shooting subsided, to retrieve his body.