Israel Arrests Six Suspects Related To Clashes In Palestinian West Bank Settlements

JAKARTA - Israeli police have arrested six suspects over the rampage of settlers in occupied West Bank settlements earlier this week, following a deadly armed attack by a Palestinian.

A Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli male brothers on Sunday as they were driving in the occupied West Bank, triggering Israeli settler attacks on homes and cars that killed one Palestinian, officials said.

Israeli police said on Wednesday they hoped to make more arrests during their ongoing investigation into settler violence in and around Huwara, a Palestinian village where two Israeli brothers from a nearby settlement were shot dead.

Major General Yehuda Fuchs, who commands the Israeli military in the area said his troops had been preparing to retaliate against the settlers, but they were surprised by the intensity of the violence which he said was carried out by dozens of people.

"The incident in Huwara is a pogrom carried out by criminals," he told N12 News on Tuesday, reported Reuters March 1.

A 'pogrom' is a mob attack, often sanctioned by the authorities, against a religious, racial or national minority. The term is usually used to refer to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Fuchs' comments come amid rising tensions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's religious-nationalist government, which includes supporters of hardline settlements demanding a crackdown on Palestinian attacks.

One of them, the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has called on people "not to take the law into their own hands". Meanwhile, the Jewish Power Party accuses Netanyahu of being weak in terms of terrorism.

"This is not 'vigilante', because law-abiding people do not sow terror among the (civilian) population," Fuchs said.

"Collective punishment does not help fight terrorism, on the contrary, it can even lead to terrorism," he said.

With the Holy Month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover celebrations just weeks away, foreign mediators have been trying to defuse tensions that have soared after a spate of Palestinian street attacks and deadly Israeli military attacks.

"I'm worried," US Ambassador Tom Nides said at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday evening.

"It's going to be a very complicated period we're going through, we have to keep things as calm as possible so that things don't get out of control, which can easily happen," Nides said.