Israeli Press
Katz tells the army to hand settler rioters to the police
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's defence minister has ordered the army to draft a plan moving law enforcement over Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank to the police, the Israeli daily Ynet reported.
Israel Katz gave the instruction to the chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, after the settler assault on Qusra drew a rare American condemnation. Enforcement against civilians, he argued, "is not its role, and it does not have the ability" to do it — the army's task is fighting Palestinian militants.
Senior military-law authorities quoted by the paper called the announcement empty. Their objection is not that the police lack powers but that they already hold them and do not use them, under a national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who has spent his term defending the people the army is now asked to stop policing.
The reporters Einav Halevi and Gal Ganot recorded what happened on the ground while the directive was being written. Settlers rebuilt the outpost near Qusra that had been cleared the day before. It was taken down again within hours.
Palestinians in Qusra have been living with that cycle for years, and the argument in Israel is over which uniform arrives to end it — not over whether anyone will be charged.
For a village under siege, the distinction between an army that says it cannot and a police force that does not is thin. Both answer to the same government, eleven weeks before an election.
