Israel Press: Crackdown on Settlers Unlikely to Work
Israeli commentators said on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to crack down on a growing tide of settler violence appeared to be too little too late.
Police and army officers told the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper there was "only a small chance the latest steps will fundamentally change the state of law enforcement in the territories".
"A system established over decades in the West Bank, and the mutual dependence between the settlers, the politicians and the security forces is too strong to be reversed in one fell swoop," the paper said.
"The measures approved yesterday include steps in the right direction, but it appears they don't amount to more than a band aid."
Under new regulations approved on Wednesday by Netanyahu, Jewish "rioters" will be subject to imprisonment without trial on the order of military commanders, a measure known as "administrative detention" which until now has been almost exclusively used for Palestinian suspects.
The new rules also increase the number of suspected troublemakers who will be barred from entering the West Bank, and they allow for soldiers to conduct arrests and for the offenders to face justice in military courts.
Until now, only the police were authorized to arrest offenders, who would be tried in civilian courts.
It also orders that more resources be given to specialist units of the Shin Bet internal security service, the police, the army and the state attorney's office, who are charged with investigating Jewish extremists.
Extremist vandals on Thursday torched another mosque in the latest "price tag" attack.
It was the second time in as many days that vandals had tried to burn down a mosque and left Hebrew-language graffiti at the scene in a protest linked to state plans to dismantle a handful of wildcat settler outposts.
The mounting wave of extremist violence was earlier this week directed at Israeli troops, which pushed Netanyahu to announce the new measures against offenders, who are often referred to as the "hilltop youth" as many of them come from remote settlements and outpost in the mountainous northern West Bank.
The website of the Hebrew-language Maariv daily said that there was little real prospect of reining in the lawlessness as long as Netanyahu's right-wing coalition counted on settler and nationalist support for its parliamentary majority.
"The only chance of staunching the hilltop youth phenomenon and their 'price tag' (policy) is to change the government in Israel," wrote commentator Yael Paz-Melamed.
"As long as the government is comprised of the parties which are its members today and Benjamin Netanyahu is at the wheel, everything will stay as it is," she wrote.
Netanyahu had been advised by his justice and internal security ministers to classify the extremists as "terrorists" but decided against the move.
Israel Hayom, a mass-circulation freesheet which generally supports Netanyahu, said the premier had not gone far enough and expressed fears the country could be "rolling toward a state of civil war."
"As an emergency measure, it is not enough for Benjamin Netanyahu to ask for a crisis plan which, by the time it has been drafted, will be outdated or forgotten in a drawer," wrote veteran commentator Dan Margalit.
"The government must demonstrate determination and apply force but for now it conveys discouragement and faint-heartedness," he said.
Top-selling Yediot Ahronot said that years of turning a blind eye to settler attacks on Palestinians meant it was too late to stop them taking the law into their own hands against fellow Israelis.
"The rule of law is imposed selectively in the occupied territories, violence has become commonplace and now it has evolved into a contagious disease," Boaz Okon wrote.
"Hence the attempt to return to some form of human dignity ends in failure. Contrition becomes practically impossible."
Source: Agence France Presse
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