Yisrael Katz seeks Rabbis’ help in dealing with settlers’ terror

By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The national Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that last week, the Israeli Army Minister Katz rejected a request from the Israeli Internal Security Apparatus i.e. ‘Shin Bet’ to issue an administrative detention order against a settler suspected of terrorist crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank. He explained to the Apparatus that he preferred ‘religious supervision’ over security prosecution, in a wondering as he knows the good relationship between the settlements’ rabbis and those suspected of terrorist crimes against the Palestinians. Katz again asked head of the Shinn Bet to look for alternatives to administrative detention orders against settlers in the West Bank.
Noting that, administrative detention orders have been used for many years against Palestinians, and settlers accused of terror activities under the Emergency Powers Law of 1979, which allows arrest in emergency. The law gives the Minister the authority to issue a detention order for a period of 6 months to maintain security, and the Chief of Staff has the authority to issue detention for a period of 48 hours, where the. Law Enforcement Bodies tot bring the detainee before the court within 48 hours,´-or-released.
Katz rejected the Shin Bet s request comes within the context of a decision he has made to stop the policy of administrative detention against settlers, who carry out attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, which had previously been applied to some suspects in attacks on Palestinians. Instead of signing the administrative detention order against the suspect, he held a meeting in his office with a group of rabbis close to the settler, and asked them to ensure that he won’t repeat any terrorist activities again. His decision is considered a -dir-ect response to the demands of settlers in the West Bank, as Yedioth Ahronoth Paper revealed at the time that heads of settlement councils in the West Bank have asked the new minister to annul the administrative detention orders against settlers.
It is obvious that Katz’s stance reflects a new policy in dealing with cases of violence in the West Bank, where in cases of suspicion of Palestinians, they are either be at gun point´-or-administrative detention, which sometimes extends for years, the occupation avoids taking action against settlers involved in carrying out terrorist attacks, even in that security information confirms they pose a threat to the lives of Palestinian civilians. Noting here that according to a report by the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission last week, settlers carried out about 375 attacks, concentrated in the Governorates of Hebron with 358 attacks, Ramallah, 342, and Nablus 328.
With this stance, Katz is committing serious criminal violations, as he is giving the ‘Hilltop Youth" and other Jewish terrorist organizations in the settlements and outposts a ‘license to kill’, as Israeli media reported citing several legal and judicial references in Israel. Moreover, Israeli experts in criminal law and international criminal law criticize Katz’s policy to stop administrative detentions of settlers, but continued against Palestinians, considering the move as illegal and discriminatory and consecrating apartheid.
They warn of possible international repercussions, including new arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Katz himself, especially, since the Israeli Supreme Court has supported the policy of apartheid in applying the law between Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank. When it rejected petitions demanding an end to the policy of demolishing the homes of perpetrators of operations - under which Israel demolishes the homes of Palestinians convicted of what the occupation authorities call ‘terrorism’, but completely refrains from demolishing the homes of Jews convicted of similar crimes.
In this regard, Dr. Eliav Lieblich, professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, warned of the repercussions of Minister Katz’s decision and policy, noting that it constitutes a violation of international law that prohibits discrimination in the use of security measures and may lead to the International Criminal Court issuing additional arrest warrants against Israeli security and political officials, including Katz himself, and possibly imposing international sanctions on Israel.
The Israeli organization ‘Tag Meir’, which fights hate crimes, also said that administrative detention decisions are intended against Jewish terrorism and ‘Price Tag’s Groups’, and against revenge operations against innocent Palestinians, and stopping the use of administrative detention decisions against settlers in the West Bank constitutes a waste of Palestinian blood and property with his approval. As for the Israeli ‘Peace Now,’ it attacked Katz’s decision by saying, ‘the decision to stop administrative detention against settlers is a cynical decision disconnected from reality, and works to normalize and legitimize Jewish terrorism under the cover of war, and instead of using an iron fist against the settlers, Katz awards them’.
In contrast, Katz rejects the Shin Bet s request to issue an administrative detention order against a terrorist settler and refer the matter to the rabbis, which has evoked welcoming reactions in some circles of the occupying State. Itamar Ben Gvir welcomed the Minister s policy. The Yedioth Ahronoth Newspaper wrote about this, saying that ‘the decision issued by Katz cannot be separated from the changes made by Minister Ben Gvir in the ‘Israeli Police brigade - West Bank’ that stopped cooperation with the Shin Bet months ago, which means this apparatus has no tools to prevent Jewish terrorism´-or-hate crimes.’
Israeli Finance Minister, Smotrich also congratulated Katz on his decisions, as saying, ‘I congratulate my friend and partner Yisrael Katz on this courageous and necessary decision, a decision that abolished discrimination against settlers, and ended a period in which settlers were considered second-class citizens, and strict and undemocratic measures were applied against them.’ Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir welcomed his security track, not only on the issue of administrative detention, but also on other issues, including the evacuation of illegal settlement outposts, the opening and closing of roads to Palestinians in the West Bank, and the use of the carrot and stick policy with the Palestinians.
The major question here remains pressing for an answer to setting the law aside in search of solutions through ‘religious supervision’´-or-other means to deal with settler terrorism, assigning the task to the settler rabbis instead of enforcing the law raises new questions that exacerbate the problem, who are those rabbis to whom Katz assigned the task, knowing that the rabbis of the settlements in particular have always been the arsonists of those terrorist settlers. Are they like Yitzhak Shapira and Yossi Elitzur, authors of the book ‘The King’s Doctrine’ with their edicts that permit the killing of non-Jewish civilians simply to encourage them to wage war against the Jews´-or-‘weaken the position of the Jews even with words’.
The rabbis of the military rabbinate like Rabbi Shlomo Aviner with his famous call: ‘Kill them and strip them of their property, do not show mercy to them, let the killing be continuous, one person after another, do not spare a child, do not spare a crop´-or-a tree, kill their livestock from camels to donkeys’´-or-the rabbi close to Ben-Gvir, Shmuel Eliyahu, who incites against the Palestinians through Radio ‘Israel Waves’, which broadcasts from the settlement of ‘Givat Ze’ev,’ and who likened the earthquake that struck Turkey in 2023 to the drowning of Egyptians in the sea, and said that the disaster was “divine justice,’´-or-Rabbi Eyal Karim, whom the occupation army appointed as its chief rabbi a few years ago, and permitted raping gentile women in times of war,´-or-Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, head of the ‘Joseph’s Tomb’, with his edicts to kill Palestinians: ‘Every Palestinian, young´-or-old, poses a danger to the future of Israel must be killed without mercy, and no distinction between men, women, and children.’
This rabbi was awarded the ‘Torah and Wisdom’ prize by the Israeli Ministry of Education in August 2019. He heads a number of educational institutions, including the ‘Od Chai Yeshiva” in the Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank,´-or-Rabbi Eliezer Rabinovich, who along with Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, authorized the terrorists of Yitzhar to violate the ‘sanctity of the Sabbath’ by blocking roads and attacking Palestinians, as happened to the martyr Aisha al-Rabi at the Za’tara Junction in 2018.
On the other hand, the occupation authorities have launched a large-scale attack on the lands of Jerusalemites since the beginning of 2025, where they intend to carry out gardening in about 70 dunums of citizens’ lands under the ‘Temporary Use of Empty Lands’Llaw dating back to 1987. They informed citizens of Wadi al-Rababa Neighborhood in Silwan of this, noting that most of these lands are planted with perennial olive trees and don’t need any gardening work. This new attack on Palestinian property aims to create terraces, paths, and seating areas, plant trees, and design slopes, for the well-being of visitors, according to the claims of these authorities.
In Jerusalem, in order to create a settlement geographical continuity and-limit- the Palestinian geographical connection with the walls of Old Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Municipality has begun to advance a plan to build a Jewish neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah. According to this plan, dozens of Palestinian families are expected to be evacuated from their homes, and 316 housing units and public buildings will be built in this area. The neighborhood, which is planned to be built, is located on land that has been the center of a legal conflict in the occupation courts for years, between the Palestinians of this neighborhood and settlement associations, which were also accompanied by demonstrations and violent confrontations with the occupation security forces, due to what the plan entails in terms of attempts to displace Palestinians from the aforementioned neighborhood.
This plan, known as the ‘Nahalat Shimon’, has been advanced in the last two years by the so-called ‘Jerusalem Development Authority,’ where it is expected to be built in the center of the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood, in the area that the Palestinians call ‘Kabaniyeh Um Haroun,’ with an area of about 17 dunams and includes about 40 buildings, a large parking lot, and an open area.
The plans include building a group of towers in the neighborhood near the headquarters of the National Insurance Institute, and linking them to the settlement outposts in Karm al-Jaouni and Karm al-Mufti, reaching the Hebrew University to form a settlement wall that will reshape the scene on both sides of the street, where the police buildings and the settlement association ‘Amona’ located.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Forcing Jerusalemite, Moh’d Awisat, to demolish his apartment in the village of Jabal al-Mukaber, at his own, under the pretext of building without a permit.
- Demolishing the house of Awisat family, using manual tools, to avoid paying fines to the municipality
- Demolishing Jerusalemite, Bashar Abu Teir’s house in the village of Um Tuba at his own.
- Storming the children’s cemetery in the Silwan town under the protection of the occupation police and cut the fence that the town’s residents had placed around it.
- Forcing Jerusalemite Moh’d Khalayleh to demolish his 24m2 commercial store in the schools neighborhood in Jabal al-Mukaber, under the pretext of building without a permit.
- Storming headquarters of the UNRWA) located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Raising Israeli flags and provocative banners in the Issawiya town, the occupation municipality distributed demolition and stop-work orders after the occupation its municipality crews stormed the town and hung up demolition notices, stop-work orders, and summonses to visit the municipality.
Hebron:
- Bulldozing near citizens homes in the village of Um al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, and continued to bulldoze lands in Masafer to pave a new settlement road near a settlement known as the extremist ‘Ishar Man’, the bulldozing works extended to citizens lands located between Khirbet Um al-Khair and the area of Sadat al-Tha ala, which belong to the families of Shatat, Abu Shaker and others.
- Demolishing a house under construction, belonging to citizen Abdullah Ahmed Saeed al-Batran, and destroyed the electricity networks in the western area of the Ras area, in the Idhna town, west of Hebron, and smashed the electricity poles and the network, and a number of commercial facilities. The Idhna Municipality explained that the town was recently subjected to the distribution of demolition notices, and the occupation recently implemented its decisions to demolish a number of homes and facilities under the pretext of not having permits.
- Destroying 2 water-well with stones belonging to Tawfiq Khalil Awawdeh and citizen Abdul Rahman Abdul Fattah Awawdeh.
Bethlehem:
- Attacking a number of shepherds while they were grazing their sheep in the ‘Ein Fares’ area, west of the Nahalin town, and beaten them, which resulted in Abdul Rahman Shakarna sustaining bruises and wounds all over his body. He was admitted to a hospital in Bethlehem.
- Pumping wastewater into the ‘Al-Tina’ area, southeast of the Kisan lands village, which caused a health hazard and prevented the owners from reclaiming their lands, planting wheat and barley, which led to the death of 3 sheep.
Nablus:
- Forcing shop owners to close their doors in Huwara, south of Nablus, and bulldozed side roads south of the city, accompanied by a number of settlers, and closed some side roads that connect the 7 villages south of Nablus, namely: Jurish, Qusra, Talfit, Jalud, Qablan, Yatma, and Qariot, with -dir-t mounds.
- Attacking farmers in the archaeological area of Al-Masoudiya and forced them to leave their lands in the plain of the area with the aim of controlling the ‘Badis’ hill, located west of the Al-Masoudiya area, and contains housing projects and a tank for the Nablus Municipality. The Mayor of Sabastia, Moh’d Azem, said that about 7,000 dunums are being gradually controlled by settlers in the Al-Masoudiya area, which is part of the lands of Sabastia and Borqa villages.
Salfeet:
- Seizing a tractor from the Qarawat Bani Hassan town, belonging to Subhi Asa’d Rayan, and took its owner to the occupation camp.
- Seizing a concrete mixer while it was working on a house under construction, belonging to Atef Abdullah in the village Rafat.
- Demolishing a house belonging to Bassam Ahmad ad-Dik and two rooms belonging to Atba Abdul Razak Ahmad and Rami Tahseen Ali Ahmad, under the pretext of building in areas C.
Tulkarem:
- Notifying the family of the detainee Moh’d Jawdat Qasim Shahrour of the confiscation and demolition of his apartment in the Eastern Neighborhood of Tulkarm city, and placed the demolition order on his apartment located on the ground floor of a residential building comprising of 4 floors.
Jordan Valley:
- Torching a mosque in the Arab al-Malihat community northwest of Jericho, cut electrical wires supplying a number of citizens homes and a school in the community. Setting fire to an agricultural tractor in Ein al-Hilweh, attacked the Moh’d Adel Daraghmeh’s house.
- Demolishing 8 agricultural facilities in the Aqabat Jaber Refugee Camp, which are pens for sheep and fodder near the southern cemetery, belonging to the Abu Dahouk’s family.
- Bulldozing lands in area C near the Vered Yeriho settlement, and continued bulldozing operations to pave a new settlement road in the northeastern part of the settlement in a move aimed at expanding it and controlling citizens lands in the Jordan Valley.
- Expanding a settlement outpost, brought vehicles and equipment to the settlement outpost that has been established 4 months ago in the area near the Al-Jiftlik village.

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