Top Jewish right-wing extremist to be released from detention

A top right-wing Jewish extremist, who has been under administrative detention in recent months for his alleged role in attacks against Palestinians, will be released in two weeks, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

Meir Ettinger, a 24-year-old settler from the Jewish outpost of Givat Ronen, south of Nablus in the West Bank, was arrested last August by the Shin Bet security agency for belonging to an underground Jewish group in the West Bank, which planned attacks against the Palestinians and attempting to cause an escalation in the violence between Jews and Palestinians in the area.

According to the Shin Bet, the group wished to ultimately topple the regime in Israel and establish a new state, based on the Hebrew biblical law. Ettinger has been one of the Shin Bet's top wanted suspects prior to his arrest.

Administrative detention is a practice which allows Israeli security forces to hold on to suspects in security-related offenses for renewable periods of up to six months without filing an indictment against them, usually used against Palestinian suspects.

The Shin Bet security agency did not request to extend Ettinger's detention during a court session discussing the matter at the Lod District Court on Tuesday, the Ha'aretz daily reported, therefore he will be released within two-weeks.

Ettinger will face different limitations regarding places he can be at and people he can talk with after he will be freed, the daily said.

Ettinger's arrest was made shortly after Jewish extremists threw Molotov cocktails and set fire to the home of the Dawabshe family, in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank, in which 18-month-old baby Ali and his parents were killed.

Israel's security establishment announced a crackdown on Jewish extremists following the attack, with Ettinger's arrest being prominent, as he is the grandson of late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Kahane was the founder of the ultra-nationalist Kach party, outlawed in 1988 from parliament for being racist and anti-democratic, after spreading anti-Arab and nationalist radical ideology. He was arrested dozens of times in the United States and Israel for planning and carrying out domestic terrorism attacks throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and was assassinated by an Arab gunman in New York in 1990.

In late April, seven Jewish suspects from the West Bank settlement of Nahliel were charged for allegedly carrying out attacks against Palestinians, after forming a Jewish "terror cell" in central Israel, attacking Palestinians and vandalizing their property.

Ultra-nationalist Israelis have in the past years been accused of vandalizing Palestinian property and carrying out attacks against Palestinians, as well as vandalizing other religions' sites, and targeting Israeli left-wingers, in what came to be known as "price tag" attacks.

These attacks aim to exact a price for damages to the settlement enterprise, protest arrests of other Jewish settlers and create unrest in the West Bank.

Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip territories in the 1967 Mideast War, with the international community view the Jewish settlements there as illegal.

Since October, 28 Israelis and 203 Palestinians have died in a wave of violence in the area. Endit