JERUSALEM – Israeli police said yesterday they had arrested 10 people in the West Bank after illegal settler attacks on an American photographer and a French mayor that drew international condemnation but mixed messages from the government.
Police said they raided several locations across the illegally occupied territory and seized cars and potential evidence related to the attacks.
The arrests come as violence increases in the West Bank, with illegal Israeli settlers disrupting the annual olive harvest of Palestinians.
“Following the severe incidents of violence over the past weekend, including the assault of a media worker and the suspected attacks on foreign civilians, an arrest operation was conducted before dawn,” said Major General Moshe Finchi, the Israeli police’s West Bank commander.
“Suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the violent incidents, violating a military commander’s order concerning a closed military zone, and illegal construction,” he said.
Rising numbers of attacks by illegal settlers against Palestinians have drawn international outrage, with Britain describing it as “ethnic cleansing” and imposing sanctions on products from Israeli settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a tight race for a new mandate in 27 October elections, has tried to shore up his right-wing base and has cast doubt on the circumstances behind the recent illegal settler attacks on Westerners.
The opposition meanwhile described the incidents as a stain on Israel’s image and accused Netanyahu of allowing the violence to happen.
US praises arrests
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who had called Friday’s beating of veteran photographer Heidi Levine an “act of terror” and demanded punishment, called the arrests a “very positive development”.
Levine, 65, who was on assignment for The Washington Post, was taken to a hospital with broken vertebrae. She was visited at her hospital bed both by President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, and centre-left opposition leader Yair Golan, who both voiced sorrow over what happened.
Golan in a social media post afterwards said that if he takes power, there will no longer be “a reality in which Jews instil terror in the name of Jewish supremacy, and stain the state we built here”.
One day after Levine’s beating, illegal settlers attacked a convoy of European diplomats including the French and Belgian consuls general in Jerusalem as they went through the town of Taybeh in the West Bank on Saturday.
The illegal settlers beat up Bernard Baudoux, 78, the mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, who is an advocate of the Palestinian cause and had come on a goodwill visit helping harvest olives.
The European Union strongly condemned the attack and urged “full accountability as well as effective measures” to prevent violence against Palestinians as well as journalists.
Rights groups note that Israel rarely prosecutes illegal settlers when the victims are Palestinian.
Illegal settler attacks against Palestinians, including killings, beatings, vandalism and arson, averaged six a day in the first half of the year, according to the United Nations.
Netanyahu earlier questioned the facts behind the two recent incidents.
In Levine’s beating, he alleged that Palestinians and “far-left” activists were fanning violence. With the attack on the diplomatic convoy, he pointed to the mayor’s political views and said the diplomats should have coordinated with the Israeli military.
The top official on human rights in the US State Department, Riley Barnes, on Sunday visited the same town where the mayor was beaten, which is largely Christian. He was unharmed. – Nampa/AFP
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