Israeli ‘Jewish terror’ incidents targeting Palestinians tripled in 2018

About 482 politically motivated crimes by Jews were reported in the West Bank last year, including assault and property damage, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday.

Last year saw a steep rise in “nationalist crimes,” violence and property damage by Jews against Palestinians in the West Bank, the newspaper said. As of mid-December, 482 such incidents had been reported, compared to 140 for 2017, it said.

Violence by settlers and right-wing activists included beating up and throwing stones at Palestinians. More frequently, the offenses consisted of painting nationalist and anti-Arab or anti-Muslim slogans, damaging homes and cars and cutting down trees belonging to Palestinian farmers.

Such incidents decreased sharply in 2016 and 2017 from previous years, the Israeli newspaper said. The decline has been attributed to the response of the authorities following the firebombing of a home in the West Bank village of Duma, which took the lives of three members of the Dawabshe family. Amiram Ben-Uliel, a young settler, was indicted on three counts of murder in that case. After the attack, the newspaper said, the Shin Bet security service arrested several extremist right-wing activists living in the northern West Bank who were suspected of involvement in violence and incitement to violence against Arabs.

A series of actions taken during that time — including detention without charges, restraining orders keeping suspects out of the West Bank and in a few cases the granting of permission to interrogate suspects using harsh methods — enabled the authorities to crack a number of cases, which acted as a deterrent and brought down the rate of violence against Palestinians, it pointed out.

However, over the past year, after the activists were released (as well as the rise of new, younger groups), violent acts increased once again, it said.