RAMALLAH – The Beersheba District Court Thursday indicted three Jewish settles for carrying out “price tag” attacks against Palestinians near the West Bank city of Hebron. The court charged the settlers, in their 20s, with and conspiracy and arson, among other charges. They have been under house arrest since Friday. The indictment said that the three torched a parked Palestinian car in the Palestinian town of Al-Dahriyeh, to the south of Hebron. It added that the settlers also daubed “price tag” and other slogans on a wall in the town. The three were arrested on Dec. 3. Mickey Rosenfeld, spokesman of Israel's police, said at the time that undercover officers operating near Al-Dahriyeh caught the three who torched a car and spray-painted the words “price tag” and “congratulations Effi” on nearby wall. The Israeli police said the settlers are suspected of being linked to other ideological crimes carried out in the West Bank in the past. Meanwhile, a group of Jewish settlers uprooted 40 olive trees in the West Bank village of Qosra, to the south of Nablus. Ghassan Daghlas, a senior Palestinian official in charge of the Israeli settlement file in northern West Bank, said that settlers arrived at the southern outskirts of Qaryout and uprooted the trees. Settlers' “price tag” attacks have continued to increase in recent months, mostly within the West Bank but inside Israel as well. Attacks on Palestinian property— notably mosques, cemeteries, olive trees and farm lands—and physical attacks have intensified. “Price tag” is the slogan adopted by extremist Jewish settlers who carry out reprisals against Palestinians and their properties in response to the evacuation of settlement structures by Israeli forces.
