Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accused the Israeli government of directly organising, funding and protecting Jewish terrorism in the West Bank. Writing in Haaretz yesterday, Olmert — who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009 — issued what he called “unprecedented and harsh accusations against an Israeli government and the defence establishment.”
“The fight against Jewish terrorism in the West Bank must advance to the next stage and be waged with greater determination,” said Olmert. “The daily terrorism that is managed, directed, encouraged and supported by the Israeli government can no longer be tolerated.”
Olmert dismissed the Israeli government’s attempts to portray settler violence as the work of isolated individuals. “What is happening across the West Bank today is not the work of ’70 kids from broken homes’,” he wrote, in a direct rebuke of a claim previously made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Nor are these the crimes of a small, anomalous minority among settlement residents, as some leaders of the settler movement often contend.”
According to Olmert, “The State of Israel is conducting an organised, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
