Ronen Bar does not mince his words. The head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, denounced, in an open letter addressed to ministers, the danger represented by the increasingly frequent violence committed by small groups of extremist settlers against the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
For him, this kind of aggression is incontestably “Jewish terrorism”, which causes “indescribable damage” and “endangers the existence of Israel”. The threat is such that Yoav Gallant, the Minister of Defense, has taken up this warning with an unprecedented alarmist tone.
Both were referring in particular to a punitive raid carried out last week by about fifty masked extremist settlers, some of whom were armed, in the village of Jit in the northern West Bank. During this “pogrom”, as several Israeli commentators called it, one Palestinian was shot dead, others injured, while several houses and cars were set on fire. The images of these atrocities caused shock in Israel. Four suspects were arrested on Friday.
Possible conspiracy
But for Ronen Bar, the count is not there. He hints at the possibility of a plot due to the increase in this type of aggression since the start of the war on October 7 in the Gaza Strip. According to the head of the Shin Bet, the police, controlled by the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of an ultranationalist party, is showing “incompetence” and “maybe even gives the impression of hidden support for these acts, which causes a significant increase in the number of those who take part in them.”
Ronen Bar also attacks officials who are “members of the establishment” and who, according to him, give legitimacy to this violence. He also does not fail to point out that the weapons available to these extremists were distributed to them “legally”, some of them with the authorization and encouragement of the Minister of Police.
Sanctions
And he added that these attacks can only fuel a “cycle of terror and vengeance” on the ground while provoking criticism “from our best friends in the world.” He was referring to the United States, the European Union, and France in particular, which have taken sanctions in recent months against violent settlers and organizations that support them.
Ronen Bar and Yoav Gallant have Itamar Ben-Gvir in their sights, who went to pray with hundreds of his followers on August 13 on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism in the Old City of Jerusalem, where the Esplanade of the Mosques, the third holiest site in Islam, extends. Under a status quo in force for more than half a century, which the police are supposed to enforce, including by force, Jews can go to the site, but not pray there.
Special treatment
The Shin Bet chief also attacked Itamar Ben-Gvir, as head of the prison administration. The few perpetrators of anti-Palestinian violence who are arrested receive preferential treatment during their detention and receive solidarity funds collected for them by far-right MPs and sympathisers upon their release.
In response, Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded the resignation of Ronen Bar, accused of being partly responsible for the October 7 fiasco when the army and the Shin Bet were taken by surprise by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Addressing the defense minister, Ben-Gvir, whose support is vital to Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority, proclaimed that he would do better, as he has promised, to “bring Lebanon back to the Stone Age” if Hezbollah continued its aggression, rather than “allowing northern Israel to return to the Stone Age” following the dozens of rockets fired daily by this Shiite militia allied with Iran towards the border region.
