The Israel Defense Force high command denied charges by two Knesset members that Jewish settlers in the West Bank had organized militias to carry out reprisals against Arabs.
The allegations, by Yossi Sarid and Dedi Zucker of the dovish Citizens Rights Movement, were incorrect, according to Gen. Ehud Barak, the deputy chief of staff.
He confirmed Tuesday that there have been several cases of Jewish vigilantism in the administered territories, but said that those involved were brought to trial.
Barak stressed there are no paramilitary organization operating in the territories.
Sarid and Zucker persisted however, demanding that Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin investigate a number of mysterious cases in which Palestinian children have been killed or injured.
The IDF at the moment seems anxious to appease the settlers after the death last week of Albert Jerassi, a resident of Alfe-Menashe.
Jerassi, 38, was burned to death when his van caught fire, probably as a result of a firebomb attack.
There was a firebomb attack on a Jewish vehicle in the outskirts of Kfar Sava, in Israel proper, over the weekend. No one was hurt.
IDF officers warned the settlers to take no security initiatives on their own, but the settler leaders said they would continue to patrol the roads until “the feeling of security is restored.”
Meanwhile, the two Knesset members cited specific cases, not contested by the IDF, in which young Arabs were killed or injured by “mysterious explosives” or other weapons.
They want an investigation of the death of an 8-year-old Arab child in Tamoun village, and the wounding of his 14-year-old cousin by “an object which was thrown at them from a military jeep,” according to their relatives.
A half-hour later, the Knesset members said, an 11-year-old girl was injured in the same village by a brick thrown at her from a “small white car, in which two bearded men wearing skullcaps were sitting.”
Military sources said it was likely the children had been playing with abandoned live shells.
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