© JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFPIllustrative: Israeli soldiers stand by as masked Israeli settlers throw stones at Palestinian protesters (unseen) gathering during a demonstration against construction on an Israeli outpost near the Palestinian village of Turmusaya and the settlement of Shilo, north of Ramallah in the West Bank, October 17, 2019.
The two, ages 18 and 15, were pulled over while driving outside Bat Ayin and transferred to interrogation, a law enforcement official confirmed.
The Kan public broadcaster reported that the suspects had been en route to carry out a so-called price tag attack — an offense whose perpetrators claim is in retaliation for Palestinian violence or government policies seen as hostile to the settler movement.
A spokesman for the Honenu legal aid organization said that the older teen has been served an administrative order barring him from meeting with an attorney for four days. The tactic is sometimes used by security forces in ticking time-bomb scenarios where enhanced interrogation measures are employed to prevent an imminent attack.
© Kobi Gideon/Flash90A view of the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin
The arrests came two days after another pair of teens were arrested in Bat Ayin on charges of assaulting two police officers. According to their attorney Moshe Polski — also from Honenu — the officers were disguised as Palestinian workers.
Polski claimed that the officers had been acting strangely, thus raising his clients' suspicions. Moreover, the attorney pointed out that the ostensible Palestinian workers should not have been in the settlement to begin with because Bat Ayin has a strict policy against hiring non-Jews. In November, a Palestinian bus driver was assaulted during stops in Bat Ayin, leading the Egged public transportation company to briefly cease its services in the hilltop community.
Last month, two Israelis were arrested for hurling rocks at a Palestinian vehicle near Bat Ayin.
A security official told The Times of Israel then that there had been a notable increase in settler violence targeting Palestinians surrounding the Bat Ayin settlement in recent weeks.
These included a so-called Price Tag attack in neighboring Jab'a, in which the perpetrators vandalized vehicles and graffitied Hebrew phrases, including "Revenge for Bat Ayin," in an incident days after security forces razed a structure in an illegal outpost near the flashpoint settlement.
© Sraya Diamant/Flash90Border Police at the Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank, October 24, 2019, after demolishing a structure at the Kumi Ori outpost near Yitzhar.
The security official said that many of those involved in the latest spate of violence had come from the outposts surrounding another flashpoint settlement — Yitzhar in the northern West Bank.
In October, the IDF declared the Kumi Ori outpost southwest of Yitzhar a closed military zone, following several incidents of violence in which residents targeted neighboring Palestinians, as well as security forces dispatched to protect them.
Due to the increased military presence in the northern West Bank, some of the hilltop youth, as they are known, traveled south to the Bat Ayin area, the security official explained.
He added that the current situation in the West Bank was reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2015 firebombing of the Dawabsha family home in the village of Duma, a terror attack that killed a couple and their baby.
Comment: It seems little has changed in a year, as the Settlers have become increasingly malevolent: