Israeli forces said on Sunday that they had arrested four Palestinians on suspicion of shooting a car near an occupied West Bank settlement, in an attack in which a settler was killed and two others injured.
“The four terrorists who carried out the shooting last Thursday have been arrested,” the IDF said in a statement. “The suspects were taken to the security forces to continue the investigation and the gun of the suspect who fired was seized.”
In the attack, 25-year-old Yehuda Dimentman was killed and two of his comrades injured as they left Homesh, a wilderness settlement in the northern West Bank where they were studying at a Talmudic school.
According to the military, the suspects were arrested in Silat al-Harithiyah, a village near Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett praised the military, police and the Shin Bet Internal Security Service for the arrests.
“Every terrorist will know that Israel will bring him to justice,” he tweeted, adding in a message to Dimentman’s family: “The pain is enormous, but terrorism will not win and it will not move us from home. “.
More than 475,000 Israeli settlers today reside in the occupied West Bank, home to 2.8 million Palestinians. Israeli colonization, illegal under international law, has continued under all Israeli governments since 1967.
Some 2,000 people attended the funeral of Yehuda Dimentman, a young father who lived in the settlement of Shavei Shomron, on Friday in Jerusalem, an AFP journalist noted.
Army spokesman Brigadier General Ran Kochav told Israel Public Radio that the suspects were captured without a shot being fired.
“I think we are talking about a terrorist organization”, he also declared, without giving further details.
Several Palestinian groups hailed the attack, although none claimed responsibility.
– Series of attacks –
These arrests follow a tense weekend. Israeli border police said on Saturday they arrested a 65-year-old Palestinian woman in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, who stabbed an Israeli settler, injuring him.
Last week, a Palestinian teenager, whose family is threatened with eviction, was arrested in East Jerusalem after an alleged knife attack on an Israeli woman walking with her child, who lived in a settlement in her neighborhood.
Settlers attacked the village of Burqah in the northern West Bank near the site of Thursday’s deadly ambush on Friday, throwing stones at houses and firing weapons.
Further south, in the village of Qaryout, a Palestinian was hospitalized after being assaulted by settlers at his home, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Israeli police said they were investigating the incident.