Israel police arrest suspects over settler attacks on US journalist, European diplomats

TEL AVIV, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Israeli police said on Monday they had arrested eight suspects as part of an investigation into violent incidents in the West Bank over the weekend, including attacks on an American photojournalist and European diplomats in separate incidents. 

Police did not identify the suspects, who were taken into custody for questioning, or disclose any accusations against them. The investigation was ongoing, police said. 

Prosecutions of Israeli settlers are rare.

Israeli radio station Galatz reported the suspects were Israelis and that the Shin Bet domestic security service was taking part in the investigation.

Masked Israeli settlers were filmed on Friday assaulting Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, a US citizen, who was covering a Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank. 

On Saturday, European diplomats and a French mayor were attacked by masked settlers in another part of the West Bank.

The weekend violence has drawn condemnation from the United States, Israel’s closest ally, and from France, Belgium and Poland, whose diplomats were attacked on Saturday.

While Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and the Israeli military blamed “Israeli rioters” for the attack on the diplomats, Netanyahu, whose coalition is projected to lose its governing majority at the October 27 election, has been more circumspect.

He has said the diplomats entered a “sensitive area with a history of confrontations without prior coordination” with the Israeli military, and that the facts ​of the attack on Levine were “unclear”.

Settler attacks ​on the Palestinians ⁠are surging, with at least 170 since September 27, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. Journalists, Israeli activists and foreign observers have also been targeted.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Tom Hogue and Stephen Coates)

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