Former director of the Shin Bet Security Agency Avi Dichter brushed off Tuesday the use by the United States of the term "terror attack" to condemn the killing of a 19-year-old Palestinian in the town of Burqa, as a court ruled one of the Jewish settlers held as suspects be released to house arrest.
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"We strongly condemn the terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers," the US State Department's Near East Bureau said on Saturday, in its first application of the term in the context of settler violence.
Video: Anti-judicial reform protests outside the home of Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter. Credit: Yaniv Zohar
Israeli police arrested the two settlers on Friday, with lawyers saying it was a self-defense shooting by one of them at a much larger group of rock throwers.
Police initially accused the settlers of "deliberate or depraved-indifference homicide" with a racist motivation, but Dichter – now Agriculture Minister – argued that culpability for the Burqa death was far from clear.
"I wouldn't advise treating the US definition as a precise professional definition. At the end of the day, they are not drawing on intelligence, but on media reports," he said. "Everything gets poured into media reports – things that are correct, things that are wrong, tendentious, and other things. At the end of the day, what is important as far as we are concerned is what happened there."
Police guard
Jerusalem District Court heard arguments that the suspects – one of whom had been hospitalized, with a police guard, for a head wound – should be freed pending possible prosecution.
It ruled one should be released to house arrest while the other will be kept in remand in hospital.
"Their act was to save lives – their lives and others' lives," defense lawyer Nati Rom told reporters.
The State Department appeared disinclined on Monday to elaborate on its sharpened censure over the Burqa killing.
"The thinking is that it was a terror attack, and we are concerned about it, and that's why we called it that," spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
"We have made quite clear our concerns, but I would note that the government of Israel has made an arrest in this case and is seeking to hold the perpetrator accountable, and that's an appropriate action."
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