PALESTINIAN OFFICIALS have condemned Israel’s decision to construct hundreds of new homes for West Bank settlers in response to a brutal attack in which a settler couple were stabbed to death together with three of their children as they slept on Friday night.
Thousands attended the funeral in Jerusalem yesterday of the five members of the Fogel family, including a three-month-old baby, from the settlement of Itamar, just south of Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city.
Three other children survived the attack.
Speakers at the funeral called on the government to step up settlement construction and turn Itamar into a major city.
Itamar is one of the West Bank’s most militant settlements and Israeli security forces were on high alert to prevent revenge attacks against Palestinians. Settlers often target innocent Palestinians in revenge attacks as part of a strategy they term “price tag”.
Israelis were shocked at pictures from the scene of the Itamar attack showing children’s toys lying next to pools of blood in the bedrooms where the stabbings occurred.
The country’s leaders vowed to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice, while security forces continued widespread searches in the Nablus area in effort to find the two Palestinians believed responsible for the attack.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed “deep outrage” over the killings and said the condemnation from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was not enough. Mr Netanyahu blamed the Palestinian Authority for anti-Israel “incitement” in schools , mosques and the media.
In an effort to prevent an angry backlash from settlers, the government moved quickly to approve some 400 new homes for four large West Bank settlement blocs.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the Israeli move as “wrong and unacceptable”, saying it will “destroy everything and will lead to big problems”.
Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf said Israel was taking advantage of the Itamar attack to “launch an incitement campaign against Palestinian president Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in general.”
Settler leaders welcomed the construction of 400 new homes as “a very small step in the right direction”. A militant splinter group linked to Fatah claimed responsibility for the gruesome attack, which followed a few years of relative quiet in the West Bank, but Israeli and Palestinian security forces expressed doubt over the authenticity of the claim.
Hamas officials expressed support for any attack against settlers, while residents of Gaza, controlled by the Islamic group, celebrated by handing out sweets to passing motorists.
The latest violence came as the deadlock continued in Middle East peace efforts.
A scheduled meeting this month of the quartet of peace mediators, representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, was delayed indefinitely.
Mr Netanyahu was considering delivering a major policy speech in the coming weeks in an effort to break the impasse, but commentators speculated that the weekend attack would make it harder for him to make any significant concessions to the Palestinians.