As Army Fails to Protect Palestinians, Israeli Leaders Sympathize With Settlers

The Israeli army’s faltering attempts this week to rescue two Palestinian families who have been besieged in their West Bank homes by violent Jewish settlers prompted a striking statement on Friday morning from Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz. He said he wanted to get the Israeli military out of the business of protecting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from rampaging settlers and would try to shift the responsibility to the Israeli police. As a practical matter, only the Israel Defense Forces have the thousands of personnel needed to patrol and respond quickly to attacks in the scores of communities plagued by settler violence this year. Moreover, experts say that giving responsibility to the Israeli police would essentially put the fox in charge of the henhouse, because the police are overseen by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist settler himself. For Mr. Katz, an ambitious member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party who hopes to succeed him as its leader, his recommendation was a political move to duck responsibility, analysts said. Rather, for example, than letting the army use administrative detention to lock up settlers who break the law, a crucial tool previously used by the government, Mr. Katz is saying he prefers that soldiers avoid getting between settlers and Palestinians in their moments of “friction,” as some Israelis euphemistically call such attacks. “It is not the I.D.F.’s role, and it is unable, to address the enforcement of civil matters” in the West Bank in light of the “welcome increase” in the number of Israeli settlers there, Mr. Katz said. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in . Want all of The Times? Subscribe .