None of the 10 Palestinian occupants of a tent in a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank were inside when it was torched on Thursday in what is the latest attack by Jewish extremists. Had they been inside, there could have been a mass killing that would have surpassed the tragic deaths of the 18-month-old Palestinian Ali Saad Dawabsha and his father Saad in the now infamous July 31 arson attack in the West Bank village of Duma that sparked days of rioting and clashes with the Israeli army in the West Bank that intensified to levels reminiscent of the first and second intifadas in 1987 and 2000. Whether a third intifada will erupt because of these escalating arson attacks is debatable. The current Palestinian fragmentation that sees Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza, plus Gaza's reliance on the West Bank to ignite the intifada and the reverse, may prevent the occurrence of a third uprising. The most likely scenario is popular demonstrations and clashes with the occupation at flashpoints in the West Bank, or individual acts of vengeance, but nothing that would escalate to organized, systematic confrontations. But even if they do not lead to all-out rebellion, these Jewish attacks must be taken seriously and must be stopped. There have been a series of nationalist hate crimes, known as “price tag” attacks, by Jewish extremists, intended to deter the dismantling of unauthorized settlement outposts that have sprung up on West Bank hilltops over the years. There are now approximately 600,000 settlers in so-called illegal settlements, of which 390,000 are in the West Bank and more than 200,000 in Jerusalem. They are so-called because there is no such thing as a legal settlement. Under international law all settlements are illegal. For a number of months now, many radicalized Jewish teens have been attacking Palestinian homes, cars, agriculture and livestock, as well as mosques in a bid to terrorize them. Police rarely take action on reports of such attacks. Settlers have carried out 11,000 attacks on Palestinian targets in the West Bank since 2004. None have been brought to justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged a “zero tolerance” approach to the attacks, but Israeli authorities do little to enforce the law against militant settlers and the Israeli military largely has failed to protect Palestinians against such attacks. These religious extremists who have settled in the West Bank believe that it is their religious duty to attack Palestinians, even kill them, to drive them away. Law enforcement authorities in Israel, the Knesset, and the courts cannot wash their hands of such murderous zealots. If they treated Jewish terrorists the way they treat Arab protesters, they could prevent many of these acts of murder, arson and vandalism. These Jewish vigilantes might be the direct culprits but in reality it is the Israeli government that is committing these crimes whenever it encourages settlement expansion, builds new settler housing units in every spot in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and encourages the flocks of settlers and allows them to get away with murder. The extremist right-wing government led by Netanyahu encourages these crimes of settlers who benefit from the support of this government, its refusal to freeze settlement construction and its persistence in the process of settlement expansion. As for the Palestinians, they must ensure that the confrontation against the occupation remains at the level of popular resistance. So even if a third uprising is not on the cards, taking these cases to the International Criminal Court is very possible. These are hate crimes and must be considered war crimes.
