The Israel Police and Shin Bet security service announced Sunday that they had arrested five Israeli settlers suspected of violence against security forces in the West Bank.
The five were transferred for interrogation after police, operating based on intelligence from the Shin Bet, detained them overnight. Details regarding the suspects and the ongoing investigation have been barred from publication under a gag order lasting until September 3.
The five are members of the so-called hilltop youth, a loose network of extremist West Bank settlers.
“The Shin Bet and Israel Police view these acts of terror as a grave threat to national security and will continue to work to thwart such activity and to prosecute perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
In recent years, especially since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that started the war in Gaza, settler attacks in the West Bank have risen steeply. Most of them target Palestinians and have met little enforcement, but some have been aimed at Israeli security personnel. Late June saw a riot outside an army base, followed by an arson attack targeting an Israeli security installation.
After those incidents, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a series of measures he said were aimed at curbing settler violence against troops and security forces in the West Bank.
“We will not allow or accept such serious incidents in any form,” Katz said, according to a Defense Ministry statement, vowing significant police enforcement and the creation of a joint task force led by the police, in coordination with the IDF and Shin Bet to address the phenomenon.
Katz also approved tens of millions of shekels for social programs aimed at integrating extremist settler youth into mainstream educational frameworks and said a follow-up meeting would be held to assess progress.
The arrest of the five suspects on Sunday follows the arrests of two other settlers last week on suspicion of similar offenses. Honenu, a far-right legal aid organization, said that those suspects had been prevented from meeting with their attorneys.
Honenu is representing the five suspects arrested on Sunday as well. The group accused law enforcement of carrying out a “witch hunt against the settler community” with the recent arrests, claiming that authorities hold a double standard against settlers.
“While other groups that block roads and act violently toward public officials are dealt with gently, settlers who hold legitimate protests are pursued like common criminals,” a spokesman for the group alleged.