Israel mulls crackdown on Arab hate crimes

Israel plans to use detention without trial against Jewish extremists suspected of anti-Arab hate crimes, a minister announced Wednesday, amid mounting criticism over government failure to secure prosecutions.

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told Army Radio on Wednesday that the government intended to use "administrative detention against those carrying out so-called 'price tag' attacks."

"Price tag" is a euphemism for hate crimes committed by Jewish extremists against predominantly Palestinian and Arab-Israeli property.

The announcement came following an emergency meeting convened by senior government officials over the recent spate of vandalism.

Security officials met with government ministers to discuss how to halt the attacks after police confirmed another incident of nationalist-inspired vandalism, in which "Death to Arabs" and other racist graffiti was discovered in northern Israel, according to The Times Of Israel.

Administrative detention allows for suspects to be held without trial for up to six months. Such orders, which can be renewed indefinitely by a court decision, are almost exclusively used against Palestinians suspected of security-related offenses.

Although police have made scores of arrests, there have been no successful prosecutions for price tag attacks and the government has come under mounting pressure to authorize the Shin Bet internal security agency to step in.

"It is a matter of days or even weeks until these people are caught and investigated, and I hope they will be brought to justice for their actions," said Aharonovitch, who was to meet with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and top police and security officials later on Wednesday.

Livni said Sunday she would back the idea of defining such acts as "terrorism" after the U.S. State Department for the first time included mention of price tag attacks in its global report on terror, released April 30.

The report criticized Israel over its inability or unwillingness to prosecute price tag perpetrators.

"Violent extremists, including Israeli settlers, vandalized five mosques and three churches in Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to data compiled by the U.N.," the report said.

Police on Wednesday confirmed the arrest of a young woman from Yitzhar, a bastion of hardline Jewish settlers in the northern West Bank, after she posted remarks online allegedly justifying the use of violence against Israeli soldiers.

"She was arrested overnight and her personal computer was confiscated," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France-Presse, saying she was suspected of "inciting violence against soldiers."

"I am in favor of throwing stones in certain situations, even if the stone leads to a soldier's death," she wrote, according to a transcript of the alleged online correspondence obtained by Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"As justice minister, in the meeting I will have today with the public security minister on the price tag crimes, we will ensure that the violence against the law and against the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] will be dealt with forcefully and severely,” Livni wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday morning in response to the arrest in Yitzhar.

“What began as the love of the land turned into a wild west sown with hatred against the Arabs and against the rule of law and its representatives, and it doesn’t matter what they’re wearing: a judge’s robes, a police uniform, or an IDF uniform,” she said.

Al Jazeera and wire services