Report: Katz told Knesset committee that settler violence is not terrorism, just ‘public disturbance’

Defense Minister Israel Katz is reported to have told a closed-door Knesset committee meeting that settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank do not constitute “terrorism” but merely “a disturbance of public order.”

His remarks to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee anger Yesh Atid MKs Elazar Stern and Ram Ben-Barak, who insist that the rioters “are Jewish terrorists, this should be defined as terrorism,” according to Hebrew-language outlets.

Settler attacks have been escalating in recent weeks, prompting security agencies to invest more in fighting the trend.

The opposition lawmakers are said to be pressing Katz to reinstate administrative detention for suspected Jewish assailants, after the minister announced the controversial policy would no longer be used to hold Jewish suspects without charge on security grounds, i24 News reports. Since then, the practice has only been used on Palestinian suspects.

Defending his refusal to implement administrative detention for West Bank settlers, Katz insists there is a difference between a “security disturbance” and “public disturbance,” and claims settler violence falls into the latter category.

He purports that no security agency, including the Shin Bet, defines Jewish nationalist violence as terrorism, despite the fact that police announced this week that terror charges are to be filed against two Jewish suspects in settler attacks.

One of the suspects was detained on November 9 and is set to be charged Friday, after he was filmed beating a Palestinian woman unconscious with a club during an olive harvest in the central West Bank last month. The other was arrested on suspicion of burning property during a rampage by settlers through towns between Tulkarem and Nablus, in the northern part of the territory.