U.S. lauds Israel for arresting 10 over West Bank settler attacks

Tel Aviv — Israeli police announced on Monday the arrest of 10 people suspected to have taken part in recent violent attacks on Palestinians, an American photojournalist and European diplomats in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The arrests come amid an avalanche of criticism, including from some senior U.S. officials, directed at Israel over repeated violent attacks by groups of mostly young Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians and others in the West Bank. 

The announcement of the arrests came as more violence against Palestinians in the occupied territory was reported Monday.

Israeli police said officers working in conjunction with the Shin Bet domestic security and intelligence agency conducted a pre-dawn raid in the West Bank to locate individuals suspected of involvement in the violence and of violating a military commander's order declaring a closed military zone.

The arrests, dubbed Operation Olive Leaf by the police, came in the wake of multiple reported attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians as they worked on the annual olive harvest.

"Items linking the suspects to the alleged offenses were seized, and several vehicles were confiscated," the police said in a statement after the arrests.

On Friday, several Palestinians and Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine were injured when a group of masked Israeli men attacked Palestinians harvesting olives in the West Bank, according to videos, eyewitnesses and Palestinian authorities.

On Saturday, European officials and the Israeli military said a diplomatic convoy with representatives from France, Belgium and Poland was assaulted by masked individuals near the Palestinian village of Taybeh.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, in a social media post on Monday, called the arrests "a very positive development in finding & punishing those who severely attacked and beat Heidi Levine an unarmed journalist."

Over the weekend, Huckabee called the attack on Levine an "act of terror carried out by masked cowards."

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also condemned the attack on Levine Saturday, saying President Trump didn't want to see a crisis in the West Bank.

"We've asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff," Rubio said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, in a statement on Saturday, urged people to exercise caution before drawing conclusions about the reported attacks on the European diplomats.

Netanyahu's office noted that video published online of the incident appeared to show masked individuals confronting a diplomatic vehicle and others showed a smashed car window and someone lying on the ground, but it said those images alone did "not establish the complete sequence of events or individual responsibility."

Israel's military said the diplomatic convoy was not coordinated with the defense forces, and that such coordination would've provided more safety, but it did not deny that the convoy came under attack by settlers.

On Monday, new attacks on Palestinians by Israel settlers were reported by WAFA, the official media arm of the Palestinian Authority, which governs most Palestinians in the West Bank but has limited control over security in the occupied territory.

Two Palestinians were injured in the villages of Turmus Ayya and Deir Abu Mash'al, northwest of Ramallah, amid attempts by individuals to set homes on fire by torching vehicles in front of the buildings, WAFA reported.

On Sunday night, Israel's military said several Israeli civilians entered the Palestinian village of Wadi a-Rahim in the West Bank, sprayed graffiti and set fire to a storage shed. The military said it had begun dismantling an illegal Israeli settler outpost in the area.

Violence by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians in the West Bank has surged in recent years. 

Statistics released by the United Nations humanitarian office show that it started ramping up after Netanyahu took office in 2022 at the head of Israel's most far-right-wing coalition government in modern history in late 2022. 

The attacks have intensified in the wake of the war in Gaza, and amid strong support from some members of Netanyahu's cabinet for settlement expansion, and even for the West Bank to be completely annexed by Israel.