IDF officers said to tell PM Jewish terror accounts for up to 80% of West Bank incidents

Officers reportedly decry lack of tools to address the issue, which they warn is distracting them from offensive operations; Palestinian teen said killed by IDF after settler raid

Up to 80 percent of incidents that Israeli troops in the West Bank record are Jewish attacks on Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was told on Wednesday, amid an unchecked surge of deadly settler violence that has plunged the West Bank into chaos in recent months.

The statistic was shared with the premier by an officer in the IDF Central Command during a meeting on Jewish terrorism, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

The officer informed Netanyahu, according to Kan, that the need to devote resources to Jewish terrorism has forced the Israel Defense Forces to cut back on arresting Palestinian terror suspects, putting the security of the state at risk.

“There are company and battalion commanders here who spend the night preventing [Palestinian] terrorism and most of the day dealing with [Jewish] nationalist crime,” the officer was quoted as having said. “Arrests of wanted suspects and offensive operations are canceled because of these incidents. In some brigade operations rooms, 80 percent of the reports in the log are [Jewish] nationalist crime.”

“We are failing every day in maintaining law and order, and we have no tools,” another officer said in an appeal to Netanyahu, according to the report. “There are [illegal settlement] outposts we have evacuated dozens of times — they return. There are key activists inciting youths to violence who are not being removed, and if they are arrested, they are released and return after two days.”

The second officer reportedly stressed “there are outposts engaged in daily violence against Palestinians; by the time we arrive at the scene, there is nothing left to do.”

“The system is structured in a way that makes it impossible to defeat this,” the officer bemoaned. “It’s only a matter of time before we wake up one morning to a Telegram group reporting that terrorists slaughtered Jews in one of the outposts.”

Another officer in Central Command was said to have told Netanyahu that when he brings up the importance of upholding the law, it is seen as expressing a left-wing political position.

Shin Bet chief David Zini reportedly told the meeting, “Outposts that generate violence should be evacuated.”

He called for the evacuation of Israeli outposts “that are problematic, lack security, and outposts in Area B,” which is under Palestinian Authority governance and Israeli security control, according to Kan, which would mark a departure from Zini’s previously reported stance on settler violence against Palestinians.

The Shin Bet chief, who is affiliated with an ultraconservative yeshiva and has identified as “messianic,” was reported last month to refer to the settler attacks as instances of “friction,” rather than terrorism, and to have deprioritized stemming the rising tide of violence.

Extremist settlers, sometimes in mobs, have been recorded on a near-daily basis carrying out a variety of violent attacks, including assaulting Palestinians, torching cars, and damaging property.

Arrests in such cases are rare, and convictions are even less common, and the IDF has also faced criticism for often standing by while attacks unfold — with troops sometimes actively participating — or failing to prosecute those responsible.

In contrast, the IDF frequently arrests Palestinians who are involved in the violent confrontations with their settler attackers.

In an incident Wednesday, the IDF said troops opened fire on Palestinian rioters in the West Bank village of Jaljilya, killing one person and wounding several others, after Israeli settlers raided the village.

Palestinian media reported that a 16-year-old was shot dead in the incident.

The military said troops and Border Police officers were dispatched to Jaljilya, near Ramallah, following reports of a group of settlers entering the village to search for a herd of sheep that was allegedly stolen from an illegal settler outpost constructed in Area A of the West Bank, which is under the civil and security control of the Palestinian Authority.

When the forces arrived, the army said, they worked to escort all of the Israelis out of the village, “prevent confrontations,” and also take out the stolen livestock.

The IDF said several of those suspected of stealing the herd were detained and handed over to the police for questioning.

As the troops left the village, “a violent riot developed, which included stone throwing,” the military said, adding that troops responded with riot dispersal means and live fire at “main instigators.”

The IDF said it was aware that “several suspects” were wounded and one person was killed “by the forces’ gunfire,” and said the incident was under review.

In a separate incident, the Palestinian Authority’s Wafa news agency reported that a woman and her daughter were injured Wednesday by extremist settlers who entered the West Bank village of Burin on motorcycles and attacked their home.

The attackers allegedly smashed windows and fired shots at residents who tried to intervene.

Amid the rampant violence, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir paid a visit to an army post in the West Bank on Wednesday, where he was displeased to find that his recent warning about eroding discipline appeared to have gone unheeded, and criticized a soldier from the Nahal Brigade for wearing a non-military patch bearing the word “Messiah.”

Zamir recently told senior officers that the trend of soldiers wearing unauthorized badges and patches bearing religious, messianic, political and inciteful messages was an “erosion of norms” and a “rebellion” against the army’s values, and instructed them to crack down on the phenomenon.

After being called out by the chief of staff, the offending soldier was sentenced to 30 days in military jail by his brigade commander, Col. Arik Moyal.

The soldier’s platoon commander was handed a suspended two-week sentence, and the battalion commander was also censured by the Nahal commander.

The soldiers had been warned earlier Tuesday that Zamir would be visiting the military outpost and doing the rounds, making the discovery of the patches all the more infuriating.