Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed rising settler violence on Tuesday, asserting to US media that only “a handful of kids” who are not from the West Bank were responsible for the attacks on Palestinians.

“When they’re talking about it, they’re talking about a handful of kids,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News during his trip to the US, referring to “bloated” media coverage of the violence.

“We actually located it. It’s about 70 kids. They’re not from the West Bank,” he claimed, using the internationally accepted term for the territory rather than the biblical phrase “Judea and Samaria” favored by right-wing Israelis, though he also used the biblical term later in the interview.

“They’re actually teenagers who come from broken homes, and they do things like chopping olive trees, and sometimes they try to burn a home,” he said.  “I can’t accept that. That’s vigilantism. I’m taking that out.”

It was unclear which data the premier was referring to regarding the number of extremists involved or where they came from.

The past year has seen a surge in attacks by settler extremists on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank. The Israel Defense Forces has recorded at least 752 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence since the start of the year. The total for 2024 was 675 incidents.

The attacks, which occur on a near-daily basis, largely go unchecked. Prosecutions of Jewish extremists are rare, and convictions are even rarer. Critics have accused the government, described as the most hardline in Israel’s history, of shrugging off the attacks.

Netanyahu asserted Tuesday that there was a “false symmetry” between the acts of those teens and “over a thousand terror attacks” against settlers. “Even if it’s not symmetrical,” he went on, “I want peaceful coexistence between the Israelis and the Palestinians who live in Judea Samaria, which is part of our ancestral homeland.”

When asked about apparent disagreements with US President Donald Trump relating to the West Bank, Netanyahu denied there was any significant conflict.

“I think we both want to see a future in which that territory is not used for terrorist attacks,” the premier said.

“We’ve done a lot of things in that regard. We also want to build a lot of infrastructure there, both for us and for our Palestinian neighbors,” he said. “But I think, ultimately, Israel has to have military control over this area.”

Trump and his top aides expressed concern over several Israeli policies in the West Bank during meetings Monday with Netanyahu, a US official

© The Times of Israel