Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter has spoken out strongly against the rising tide of extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, decrying Israel’s failure so far to stamp out the phenomenon but insisting that serious efforts are underway to do so.

“I’m so angry about the issue of Jewish riots in Judea and Samaria,” Leiter, a longtime settler himself, told the Ynet news outlet in an interview published Wednesday. “It’s a handful of a few hundred people who are staining an entire enterprise — and everyone is silent.”

Leiter insisted that the hundreds of thousands of West Bank settlers are generally law-abiding citizens who “respect the law, respect their neighbors, and wake up every morning wanting only to do good.”

But he warned that the untreated problem of violence perpetrated by extremist settlers was leading Israel to lose friends in the US. “There are people in Washington who are definitely distancing themselves from Israel because of this,” he noted, mentioning Democrats who are fighting to keep backing Israel in a party that appears to be increasingly souring on the Jewish state.

“It’s as if those same people who want to support us — we are, with our own hands, pushing them away,” Leiter lamented.

Leiter was one of the first residents of the Admot Yishai neighborhood founded in 1984 in the West Bank city Hebron, and from 1989 to 1992 served as chairman of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron. He later lived in Alon Shvut, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

“Where are the rabbis of Judea and Samaria, and where are the heads of the regional councils there? Where is the Yesha Council [an umbrella settlement leadership body]? This needs to be a daily struggle,” he said. “They are not only staining the settlement enterprise — they are staining the entire State of Israel. They are feeding the narrative of violent occupiers, and it must not be ignored… There needs to be a much stronger moral statement from the leadership of Judea and Samaria.”

Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank.

Attacks, vandalism, threats and riots by extremist settlers have burgeoned under the current hard-right government, particularly since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza and on other fronts.

There has been little to no enforcement against perpetrators, with few arrests and even fewer prosecutions. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees police, has seldom spoken out against the attacks. Critics charge that under the far-right Ben Gvir, who in his previous role as a lawyer often defended Jews charged with nationalist crimes, police have been encouraged to turn a blind eye to West Bank lawlessness.

Assaults have increased further since the outbreak of war with Iran on February 28, and attacks have become a daily occurrence.

The ambassador insisted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “takes it very seriously,” saying the premier had recently met with top security officials at Central Command to address the problem.

“We are going to take control of this issue and are treating it with great seriousness,” he said. “I think the government is mobilizing to do what needs to be done. They understand the severity of the situation.”

On Monday, i24news reported that the government was reviewing a plan to establish a special Defense Ministry unit to deal with the issue of “hilltop youth” — the term for young religious hardliners seen as responsible for much of the violence.

Rather than a comprehensive plan for greater enforcement, the proposal is seen as a “soft” response focused on education and vocational guidance for disaffected West Bank youth.

Channel 12’s Amit Segal reported Tuesday that the move follows US pressure on the matter.

On Saturday, diplomats from 13 European countries and Canada issued a joint statement condemning “increasing settler terror and violence by the Israeli security forces inflicted upon Palestinian communities.” The statement blamed “settler militias,” and called on Israeli authorities to “prevent and prosecute the lethal violence, raids and attacks.”

Last week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir criticized the increase in settler attacks in the West Bank, calling it “morally and ethically unacceptable.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett — considered a key challenger to Netanyahu for the premiership in elections slated to be held later this year, and himself a longtime supporter of West Bank settlements —  also denounced “nationalist violence” last week and urged other members of the settler movement to do likewise.

A Channel 12 report late last year said Shin Bet chief David Zini had recommended that the government approve the use of electronic monitoring bracelets for settler extremists, considering it a more effective tool than the current method of using restraining orders.

Nurit Yohanan contributed to this report.

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