The Israel Police refuted accusations on Saturday that its forces had refused to arrest an Israeli settler after he was detained by the Israel Defense Forces while en route to attack the Palestinian village of Rujeib in the northern West Bank.

According to a senior security official, a group of six settlers, some of whom were masked and armed with pepper spray, attempted to enter Rujeib on Saturday but were detained by an IDF squad that managed to intercept them before they entered the village.

Most of the settlers fled upon seeing the soldiers, Hebrew media reported, except one suspect who was detained. The troops attempted to hand him over to the police, the security official said, but they refused to question him, claiming that it was unnecessary.

As a result, Army Radio reported, the suspect was detained at the front gates of an IDF outpost in the Itamar settlement for four hours until law enforcement finally arrived.

The police denied the “false” reports on Saturday evening, claiming that forces were never informed of the matter.

“It was only after your query that police knew about the incident,” the police said in a statement to Army Radio, adding that upon learning of the incident, officers then immediately reached out to the local IDF battalion commander “and a patrol car was sent to pick up the detainee.”

The police have previously been accused of ignoring settler violence or would-be violence.

Last year, then-IDF Central Command head Gen. Yehuda Fox penned a letter obtained by Channel 12 warning that police were not acting against violent settlers due to a directive from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the law enforcement body.

Saturday’s incident came two days after dozens of settlers rampaged through the West Bank Palestinian village of Jit.

More than 100 settlers were involved in the violent attack, during which a 23-year-old Palestinian man was shot and killed and another was seriously wounded. Israeli security forces have said it was unclear who shot the Palestinians.

At least four homes and six vehicles were torched by the settlers before the military arrived.

The Israel Defense Forces said that minutes after the “grave incident” was reported, troops and border police officers were dispatched to the scene, where they used riot dispersal means and live fire in the air while taking the Israelis out of the village.

Settler violence spiked after the October 7 massacre carried out by the Hamas terror group in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, but violence was already on the rise before then, according to watchdogs.

Israeli authorities rarely arrest Jewish perpetrators in such attacks. Rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual and that the vast majority of charges in such attacks are dropped.

Since October 7, troops have arrested some 4,850 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,960 affiliated with Hamas.

According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 630 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.

There have also been several cases of settlers killing Palestinians in the past 10 months, some of which are still under investigation.

During the same period, 26 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.