Settler leaders demand government close Shin Bet’s Jewish Division

The Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing settlement municipal authorities in the West Bank, asks the government to close the Shin Bet’s Jewish Division, over remarks by the department’s head in which he bragged that agents detain radical settler youth “even without evidence.”

The letter, signed by West Bank municipal heads, says the division has operated for years, not against terror but against settlers, using “illegitimate measures.” The letter stresses that suspicions against Israeli citizens must be handled by the police as demanded by the law.

The leaked conversation was between Jewish Division head Aleph and Cdr. Avishai Muallem, a police officer, who is himself being probed and who recently led the West Bank police’s investigations and intelligence unit.

The phone call gave credence to claims of increasingly strained relations between West Bank police and the Shin Bet’s Jewish Division, which deals with Israeli settler violence. Sources in the agency have complained that Muallem’s unit effectively ceased collecting intelligence on or arresting settlers suspected of nationalist attacks.