Gallant rejects call from 50 coalition members to free settlers held for Huwara riot

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant rejected a request to release four Jewish settlers under administrative detention Tuesday, after 50 ministers, deputy ministers and coalition MKs signed a letter demanding they be freed.

The four detainees are accused of taking part in last month’s deadly settler rampage through the Palestinian town of Huwara, though it’s unclear if all four remain under administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold suspects without charging them or allowing them access to counsel or the evidence against them.

The letter, sent Tuesday and signed by nine ministers and 41 deputy ministers and MKs, called for Gallant to end the practice of arresting settlers and holding them without due process. The letter was initiated by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech, and was signed by her party leader, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as other ministers including Shlomo Karhi, Idit Silman and May Golan of Likud, and dozens of lawmakers.

Gallant responded that the arrest warrants were issued lawfully at the request of the Shin Bet based on “significant intelligence material testifying to the detainees’ high dangerousness.”

He noted that two of the detainees not only took part in the Huwara rampage but also planned additional violent and “indiscriminate” acts that “endangered the lives of many residents.”

They also have “a rich past of violent acts against security forces,” and previous efforts have failed to deter them, Gallant said. They were arrested shortly after the Huwara attack.

The other two detainees appeared to be a pair of settlers from the West Bank outpost of Givat Ronen who were arrested Monday, but forbidden from seeing a lawyer until the next day.

Gallant said that while he admires the settler movement, “this case deals with individuals who chose to act against the law, don’t represent the settler movement, and are actively harming it.”

He called the February ransacking of Huwara by settler vigilantes “a watershed moment and a mark of shame for our society.”

“I recommend that those who signed the letter trust the Shin Bet recommendations and the defense minister’s decisions, which are made based solely on security-related and intelligence considerations. We must not encourage terror of any kind,” he said.

Israeli brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv were gunned down by a Palestinian terrorist while driving through Huwara, south of Nablus, on February 26; hours later, hundreds of settlers went on a destructive rampage through the town, burning homes, cars, and storefronts, and assaulting Palestinians, leading to scores of injuries and the death of a Palestinian man in unclear circumstances. Palestinians say he was shot.

The IDF general in charge of troops in the West Bank said the vigilante settlers had carried out a “pogrom”

Last week the Central District Court reduced the administrative detention of the two individuals held on suspicion of involvement in the riot.

The detention of a 17-year-old was shortened from four months to less than two, according to the Honenu organization, a right-wing legal aid group. The minor’s name is barred from publication.

It came a day after the same court shortened the detention order of the second suspect, 29-year-old David Chai Chasdai, from four months to three.

Gallant had signed off on orders keeping the two suspected Jewish extremists behind bars after a court ordered authorities to release the pair along with five others arrested over the Huwara rampage.

Israel currently holds over 900 Palestinians in administrative detention. Cases of Israelis being held under the mechanism are much more rare.