Israel hard-put to stem settler rampages, defence minister says

Israel is hard-put to stem Jewish settler rampages against Palestinians but has several suspects under special detention and has reinforced troops in the occupied West Bank, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday. A spiral of vandalism and arson was sparked by a Hamas gun ambush last week near a settlement that killed four Israelis.

Israel is hard-put to stem Jewish settler rampages against Palestinians but has several suspects under special detention and has reinforced troops in the occupied West Bank, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday.

A spiral of vandalism and arson was sparked by a Hamas gun ambush last week near a settlement that killed four Israelis. Rioters have numbered in the hundreds and included masked and armed men, at least two of them off-duty soldiers, Israeli officials suspect. Washington, already at loggerheads with Israel over settlement construction, has stepped up condemnation of what it had called "extremist settler violence," noting that among Palestinians affected have been some with dual U.S. citizenship.

"Accountability and justice should be pursued with equal vigour in all cases of extremist violence," the U.S. Office for Palestinian Affairs said on June 23, drawing an implicit comparison with Israel's handling of Palestinian militants. Responding to an opposition question in parliament, Gallant condemned the rampages as "a dangerous social phenomenon that we must fight." He described the perpetrators as a "tiny group" made up of fringe settlers and their supporters from inside Israel.

Israeli forces found it challenging to "divide their attention" between this and Palestinian militants, he said. "There are 500 Palestinian villages, some of them as large as towns. There are tens of thousands of people (Palestinian residents). You can't protect all of them at once," Gallant said.

The minister said interdiction of fellow Israelis was hard "because you're not using surveillance or the implementation of violent (military) operations against them," an apparent acknowledgement that Palestinian threats were treated differently. Still, Gallant said several suspected rioters had been placed in "administrative detention," or held without charges, based on intelligence from sources who could not be revealed in court. Another official said there were four such detainees. Police said there had been 12 arrests in the rampages.

Such assurances by Israel's hard-right government have had little sway among the Palestinians, whose Foreign Ministry has described the settler rampages as "state-sponsored terrorism." (Writing by Dan Williams Editing by Chris Reese)