Bennett condemns attacks by ‘violent gangs’ of Jewish extremists in the West Bank

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett condemns settler violence against Palestinians, saying that “we did not establish a Jewish state so that violent gangs could operate within it.”

“I strongly condemn any manifestation of nationalist violence by Jewish extremists in Judea and Samaria,” Bennett says in a statement, arguing that “the vast majority of [settlers] abhor violence and crime” and that it is supporters of the settlement movement, like him, who “must denounce the rioters and eradicate all violence from within ourselves.”

Bennett is a longtime supporter of Israeli West Bank settlements and is the former director of the Yesha Council, an umbrella body for the settlements.

Bennett’s comments come after extremist settler activists, stymied by authorities in an attempt to rebuild the illegal settlement outpost of Kol Mevaser in the central West Bank, attacked a nearby Palestinian town. Security camera footage showed several attackers setting a fire by a fence protecting a chicken coop. Activists later found burnt cloth that had been used to try to set the coops on fire.

The incident came amid a wave of rising extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Bennett calls the attack “another failure of governance” and demands that the government “let the IDF and police work.”