Israel to start detaining ‘Jewish terrorists’ without trial

Thousands of Israeli people took to the streets over the weekend to warn against a radicalised and violent fringe growing within the country, following the arson attack on a Palestinian family home in the West Bank by extremists and the stabbing of six people at a Jerusalem Gay Pride march by a suspect identified as an ultra-Orthodox Jew.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “zero tolerance” for Jewish terrorism in the wake of the two attacks.

Currently, 379 of the 5,686 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jail are on administrative detention, according to official figures.

Suspected Jewish extremists set fire to a Palestinian home in the West Bank, burning a toddler to death on Friday.

Envoy to the United Nations Human Rights, Ibrahim Khraishi, said the file prepared on the latest settlers’ attack against a family in Nablus, which claimed the life of a toddler and critically injured his entire family, would be submitted to officials of the Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner, and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.

With no arrests yet made for the arson, some Israeli commentators on Sunday questioned the resolve of security services which, when responding to Palestinian attacks, often round up suspects en masse as part of accelerated investigations.

Israeli officials of all stripes harshly condemned the incident. Graffiti in Hebrew reading “revenge” daubed at the site was consistent with past vandalism and other hate crimes by bands of young Jewish zealots targeting Arabs, Christians, peace activists or Israeli army property. “It’s unacceptable”, said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

Critics say Israel doesn’t enforce the law when it comes to settlers because of the political power they wield in Parliament and because they are still perceived in some circles as Zionist pioneers who are settling the land like the vanguard settlers who established the Jewish state.

Media reports said Ettinger could face a year of such detention under the government’s harder line against “Jewish terrorists”. Banki, wounded in the attack, died of her wounds Sunday.

He implied at the time such measures were out of the question since it would mean Jewish terrorists were somehow comparable to terror groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad.