TEL AVIV - Israeli police said on Oct 19 that they had arrested eight suspects as part of an investigation into violent incidents in the West Bank over the weekend, including attacks on an American photojournalist and European diplomats in separate incidents.
Police did not identify the suspects, who were taken into custody for questioning, or disclose any accusations against them. The investigation was ongoing, police said.
Prosecutions of Israeli settlers are rare.
Israeli radio station Galatz reported the suspects were Israelis and that the Shin Bet domestic security service was taking part in the investigation.
Masked Israeli settlers were filmed on Oct 16 assaulting Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, a US citizen, who was covering a Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank.
On Oct 17, European diplomats and a French mayor were attacked by masked settlers in another part of the West Bank.
The weekend violence has drawn condemnation from the United States, Israel’s closest ally, and from France, Belgium and Poland, whose diplomats were attacked on Oct 17.
While Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and the Israeli military blamed “Israeli rioters” for the attack on the diplomats, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition is projected to lose its governing majority at the Oct 27 election, has been more circumspect.
He has said the diplomats entered a “sensitive area with a history of confrontations without prior coordination” with the Israeli military, and that the facts of the attack on Levine were “unclear”.
Settler attacks on the Palestinians are surging, with at least 170 since Sept 27, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. Journalists, Israeli activists and foreign observers have also been targeted. REUTERS