"I want to be clear about the pictures from Huwara, I understand the pain but we must not take the law into our hands. The Israeli government, and not its civilians, need to take care of terror and deter it," National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Monday morning at an Otzma Yehudit Party meeting held at the Evyatar outpost, which was reoccupied overnight on Sunday as a response to the terror attack yesterday that killed brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv.
"I want to be clear about the pictures from Huwara, I understand the pain but we must not take the law into our hands. The Israeli government, and not its civilians, need to take care of terror and deter it."
Itamar Ben-Gvir
The statement was Ben-Gvir's first public response to a rampage by settlers in Huwara on Sunday night that resulted in dozens of burnt Palestinian houses and vehicles, as well as numerous injuries.
The terror attack was "shocking" and showed that Israel was "at war," the national security minister said in the video statement. He said that the state needed to adopt a policy of "true war on terror," instead of the current "containment policy."
"The enemy on the other side understands the message. The terrorists must be smashed, and it is time to return to targeted assassinations and kill the inciting heads of the terror organizations," he said, adding that "the diplomatic answer" to the attacks was to reestablish Evyatar, which was evacuated in 2020 after the settlers there reached a deal with the government then that they would be allowed to return pending a land survey.
Ben-Gvir penned a letter on Monday morning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that he enable the settlers to remain at the site.
Otzma Yehudit MK supports settler rampage, backpeddles
Otzma Yehudit MK Zvika Fogel said in an interview on Radio Galey Israel earlier on Monday morning, "Yesterday a terrorist came from Huwara – Huwara is closed and burnt. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence."
"Yesterday a terrorist came from Huwara – Huwara is closed and burnt. That is what I want to see. Only thus can we obtain deterrence."
Zvika Fogel
"The act that the residents of Judea and Samaria carried out yesterday is the strongest deterrent that the State of Israel has had since Operation Defensive Shield. After a murder like yesterday, villages should burn when the IDF does not act," Fogel added.
The MK made similar comments in interviews on other radio stations, including Army Radio.
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter in response, "This is not a fully right-wing government, it is a fully anarchist government. MK Fogel should go to jail for incitement to terror."
"This is not a fully right-wing government, it is a fully anarchist government. MK Fogel should go to jail for incitement to terror."
Yair Lapid
Fogel later retracted his comments.
"I say unequivocally – I do not encourage civilians to burn villages," Fogel said at the beginning of a Knesset Public Security Committee meeting, which he chairs.
He later wrote on Twitter, "My words this morning were twisted. I said that the state is the body that needs to act to deter the terrorists, and under no circumstances should citizens [do the same]. We cannot arrive at a situation where civilians take the law into their own hands. The government and the IDF's role is to provide the necessary defense, with aggressiveness and determination, and not by accepting the situation."
Labor chairperson MK Merav Michaeli penned a letter to Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara calling on her to prosecute Fogel.
"These are extraordinarily grave statements, and as we have learned from the recent past the distance between them and another pogrom of innocent people is even shorter than it might seem," Michaeli wrote.
"MK Fogel should be prosecuted in the hope that his extreme statements have no place in the political-public sphere and that the terrible incitement to violence that exacted such a heavy cost in the past will stop," she added.