By RICHARD SPENCER, 5:34PM AUGUST 9, 2023 (The Australian, 10/8/2023)
The Biden administration has taken the rare step of accusing Jewish settlers on the West Bank of terrorism after an incident in which a Palestinian youth was shot dead.
The State Department issued an unusually fierce condemnation of the incident, part of what residents of a Palestinian village described as an incursion by an armed settler group.
During the clashes, in the West Bank village of Burqa, a 19-year-old Palestinian named Qusai Mu’tan died when two men the residents said arrived in a white Toyota opened fire.
Two settlers were arrested by Israeli officials. One was in hospital, having been hit on the head by stones thrown during the incident on Friday night.
The White House has expressed alarm at the worsening situation in the West Bank, where the Israeli police have launched a series of raids this year, killing and capturing several militants.
But on this occasion Washington went further, equating the settler incursion to Palestinian militant attacks on Israeli citizens.
“We strongly condemn yesterday’s terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian,” the State Department’s Near East Bureau said in a statement.
In a separate statement it also condemned a Palestinian attack in Tel Aviv.
Asked whether the use of the word terror was deliberate, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said: “The thinking is that it was a terror attack … and that’s why we called it that. We have also been clear that accountability and justice should be pursued with equal rigour in all cases of violent extremism.”
The incident comes at a key moment in Israeli politics and in relations between Israel and the US. Israel has been convulsed with protests for months against a judicial reform bill that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, has been forcing through with the support of coalition partners from Israel’s hard right.
Those hard-right forces have also been promoting attempts to expand settlements in the West Bank, including those illegal under even Israeli law.
One of the two men arrested in connection with Mu’tan’s death was Elisha Yered, who is from a settler activist family and was previously a spokesman for a hard-right MP from the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party. He is accused of taking the pistol involved in the shooting and hiding it.
He was ordered to be released on bail to house arrest on Tuesday.
The man accused of the actual shooting, Yehiel Indore, remains in custody, but his defence team is claiming that he acted in self-defence. The leader of Otzma Yehudit, Itamar Ben Gvir, who is Mr Netanyahu’s National Security Minister, said Indore should be “given a medal” for shooting Mu’tan.
Britain has also condemned Friday’s incident. “Appalled by reports of attacks by settlers in the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah in the West Bank last night, leading to the killing of Qusai Mu’tan and yet more suffering for Palestinian villagers,” the British embassy said on social media. “UK calls for accountability and justice for those involved.”
However, the stronger American statement marks a clear warning to Mr Netanyahu, who last month received a long-awaited but as yet undated invitation to meet President Joe Biden.
The White House under Mr Biden has pulled back from president Donald Trump’s support for Mr Netanhayu, outraging much of the pro-Israel American right. Mr Biden insists he is a “friend of Israel” but that has been put under strain by the hard-right shift in Israeli politics and the expansion of settlements, which the US officially opposes.
Equating settler violence with Palestinian terrorism is a red line that US administrations have been reluctant to cross.