With settler attacks on the rise, Ya’alon said to blame Jewish Home

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon reportedly accused ministers from the pro-settlement Jewish Home party of instigating violence, and claimed that they they bore responsibility for a rise in the number of incidents of settlers attacking Palestinians, as well as IDF soldiers, in the West Bank.

During a security cabinet meeting on Monday, Ya’alon said that inflammatory comments by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of Jewish Home, and other members of his party, were behind a spate of retaliatory settler attacks, Army Radio reported.

Sources in the security establishment, the report said, have seen a significant rise in the number of settler attacks against Palestinians and IDF soldiers in the West Bank, amid a spate of violent attacks against Jews.

“The statements that the hands of the IDF are tied and that military activity is not [forceful] enough to stop the wave of terror attacks – these fuel the people who take the law into their own hands,” Ya’alon reportedly said, in an apparent reference to media comments by Bennett and members of his party.

Ministers and lawmakers from Jewish Home have also sought to wrest a pledge from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand construction in the settlements in response to the attacks. Netanyahu has refused.

Settlers established a protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s Residence on Friday, and have been calling for the use of more military force and for expanded construction.

Terror attacks against Israelis have killed four in the past week, while others were wounded in stoning and Molotov cocktail attacks in the West Bank. Four Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces, including two who stabbed Israelis in Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, the chief of the IDF’s Central Command, Maj. Gen. Roni Noma, met with settler leaders to discuss the security situation, asserting that the military has “complete operational freedom” in the West Bank.

Settlement municipal leaders also met with Netanyahu and Ya’alon Tuesday night for clarifications. In a statement issued after the meeting, the settler leaders said they had received only “partial, unsatisfying” answers.

During a tour of the IDF’s Samaria Brigade on Tuesday, Ya’alon appeared to lash out against those calling for a stronger crackdown on Palestinian rioters.

“I call on ministers, Knesset members and heads of [West Bank] municipal councils to stop the jingoistic talk, saying we should move from defense to offense. To those who do not understand this — the IDF has been in offensive mode since Operation Defensive Shield,” the defense minister said, referring to an anti-terror crackdown in the West Bank that took place over three weeks in May 2002, during the brutal Second Intifada.

“There is no problem of freedom to act and no problem of supporting the commanders. Regretfully, these comments make citizens take the law into their own hands,” Ya’alon said.