In multiple instances in recent days, extremist Jewish settlers in the dozens have attacked IDF soldiers who were either trying to prevent them from repeat attacks on Palestinian villages or when those soldiers tried to remove them from building new illegal outposts on private Palestinian land.
These are not the first such instances of Jewish extremist violence against the IDF, as they have happened occasionally for many years and increasingly so during the current war, when Palestinian terror has hit high levels.
What is unique is the number of Jewish extremists involved, estimated by the IDF at around 70, as opposed to only a few, and the weaker ability of Israeli security and law enforcement officials to handle these incidents.
If in 2015 when Amiram Ben Uliel carried out an arson attack on a Palestinian family in Duma by himself (or with one other accomplice at most), killing several family members – for which he was sentenced to life in prison – by early 2023, dozens of Jewish extremists had attacked the Palestinian village of Huwara and similarly large numbers have repeated these attacks against Jit and several other villages later in 2023 continuing until now.
Yet for most of that time, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) had the power to put some of these violent Jewish extremists in administrative detention, an exceptional legal procedure outside the standard criminal ones.
While several thousand Palestinians have been in administrative detention during the war, exceeding 1,000 during the Palestinian waves of terror that started pre-war in early 2022, Jews in administrative detention were usually in the single digits and not held for more than a few months.
Still, the tool was used occasionally and the IDF and Shin Bet were confident that its mere existence sometimes deterred widespread extremist Jewish violence, especially against IDF soldiers.
Defense Minister Israel Katz has stood out as promoting declining administrative detention of all Jewish Israelis across the board, no matter how much the Shin Bet viewed them as violent and dangerous.
Not only did Katz refuse to sign a single administrative detention order of Jewish Israelis, something overwhelmingly supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for 16 of his 17 years in office, but he also issued a blanket release of all existing Jewish administrative detainees on January 17.
The possible motives behind Katz's move
Critics of Katz said this move was taken to assuage Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at a time when Netanyahu knew Smotrich was considering toppling the government over the impending January hostage deal with Hamas, which leaked around that same day.
When Katz made that decision, some apolitical security officials said that issuing restraining orders to certain extremist activists to stay out of the West Bank, as well as initiating intensive dialogues with religious figures who might moderate some of the young extremists, might accomplish what administrative detention once did.
However, a majority of security officials said that blocking administrative detention is a purely political move that endangers security for both Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank.
Other sources said Katz would still sign on to administrative detention orders in extreme situations, possibly such as if a Palestinian was killed and it was taking time to sort out who the killer was.
Since January, the defense minister has not issued a single administrative detention order.
On June 3, Katz appointed Col. (res.) Avichai Tenami as the special project manager to handle and try to reduce Jewish West Bank hilltop youth violence through dialogue.
Tenami being an educator and a former commander and soldier in the elite Sayeret Matkal special reconnaissance unit, Katz had hoped that his work would replace the need for administrative detention.
However, the latest instances of mass violence indicate that dropping administrative detention has unleashed even worse Jewish extremist violence.
It is hard to grade Tenami after only three weeks of work, but the fact that administrative detention was repealed in January and the new special project manager was only appointed in June seems to make it clear that his new initiative is not a high priority.
In the background is the fact that top IDF and Shin Bet officials have repeatedly said for a long time that the police during Itamar Ben-Gvir’s era as national security minister have failed to properly do their job in this area.
The impact Ben-Gvir has had on police
Regarding Ben-Gvir’s impact on the police, the state prosecution has gone forward with a criminal probe against West Bank police commander Moshe Finchi, top Ben-Gvir aide Chanamel Dorfman, and West Bank deputy chief for complex cases Avishai Mualem.
The allegations are that they worked together to either cover up cases in which Jewish extremists committed crimes against Palestinians or otherwise sought to interfere in such cases, including leaking or mishandling classified Shin Bet intelligence.
Ben-Gvir and other coalition members have called this a witch hunt and an attempt to frustrate his policies of seeking to resolve Jewish extremist incidents through dialogue or other non-criminal means.
The Shin Bet has taken the state prosecution’s side and accused Ben-Gvir of creating unprecedented problems with the police prosecuting Jewish extremist violence.
After one recent mass violence incident against Palestinians, police only arrested five suspects out of dozens and let all five go within 24 hours. Over the weekend, with the latest incident against the IDF, the police only arrested six suspects out of dozens.
The state prosecution views many of these developments as simply the foreseeable result of the government changing the law relating to the police and its supervising minister, granting him new authorities not just in appointments but also in policy.
Since that change, the prosecution and the Shin Bet think that Ben-Gvir polluted aspects of the police with politics, which inevitably led to the current criminal probe.
Katz and those who wanted to drop administrative detention for Jews said it was problematic if the defense establishment was responding to the Ben Gvir-police problem by just jumping to issue more administrative detentions.
Trouble defining what Jewish violence counts as terror
Further, Israeli officials, including Katz, have had trouble acknowledging when extremist Jewish violence meets the threshold of “terror.”
For example, in April, the defense minister said that the torching of homes and vehicles carried out by Israelis in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank cannot be defined as terrorism.
In that incident, the military said that some 30 masked men, believed to be Jewish residents from the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council area, entered the village and torched property.
Even with the latest blatant violence against both Palestinians and the IDF, Smotrich seemed to ignore those issues, focusing on one aspect of the clashes where a soldier may have misfired and wounded a masked 14-year-old who was participating in throwing rocks at military vehicles.
Collectively, while the IDF and Shin Bet are still trying to prevent extremist Jewish violence in the West Bank against the Palestinians, it seems that the impact of a variety of policy shifts have made their job more difficult and encouraged some of those violent actors to be more brazen.