The director general of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party has been summoned for police interrogation in connection with an October 1 attack on police officers at the Mitzpe Jericho settlement in the central West Bank, the party said Sunday.
Police had earlier announced that the Lahav 433 major crimes unit was questioning a suspect on suspicion of extortion, assaulting and harassing an officer and obstructing an investigation. While police did not identify the suspect, the party confirmed the man questioned was its director general, Itiel Neiman.
Otzma Yehudit accused Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of "political persecution" over the interrogation, which it said followed an "attempt to intimidate MK Yitzhak Kroizer," a former Otzma Yehudit Knesset member who is also a suspect in the Mitzpe Jericho assault. Neiman was a candidate on the party's electoral slate but did not enter the Knesset following the October 27 vote.
According to Haaretz, which first reported the suspicions against Kroizer and Neiman last month, the two party members attacked officers during a riot that provided cover for the escape of a suspect in violence against Palestinians. The riot reportedly erupted after police chased the suspect and others to a location near a Mitzpe Jericho synagogue that was hosting a memorial for four fallen soldiers, including Neiman's brother Aviad, who was killed fighting in Lebanon in 2024.
Evidence and testimony from the clash indicate that Kroizer hit an officer and that Neiman grabbed an officer by the shirt and pulled him to the ground, according to police sources cited by Haaretz. Multiple officers were injured in the riot, and Ben Gvir himself later arrived at the scene and reportedly accused officers of using excessive force.
Haaretz reported last month that senior police officers fear the case will be mishandled because of the pair's ties to Ben Gvir, who oversees the police as national security minister. Ben Gvir has long faced accusations of excessive interference in police work, including from Baharav-Miara, who told the High Court of Justice earlier this year that legal efforts to prevent the minister from undermining police independence had failed.
Settler violence in the West Bank has risen sharply since the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza, and has surged further in recent months, with daily attacks and harassment and few perpetrators charged or convicted. Some attacks have targeted diplomats and the press, drawing widespread international condemnation and even sanctions against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers have regularly downplayed the violence as the work of a few hundred wayward youths, despite near-daily incidents across hundreds of villages and towns, while critics accuse the government of condoning and even encouraging attacks that have displaced dozens of Palestinian families.
In the latest incident, the Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA reported Sunday that a Palestinian man, identified in reports as Abdullah Abu Qamash, was injured in an attack by settlers in the West Bank and taken to a hospital for treatment. No further details were immediately available, and other incidents of settler violence were reported earlier on Sunday and in previous days.
