The head of Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, has warned the country’s leaders that Jewish terrorism in the West Bank is out of control and has become a serious threat to national security.

Ronen Bar issued the warning in a letter to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the attorney general and members of the Israeli cabinet, some of whom are outspoken backers of the extremist settlers responsible for the escalating violence.

Bar’s letter, sent last week but published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday night, has highlighted the wide, acrimonious gap between the far-right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition and Israel’s security apparatus.

The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of those criticised by Bar for inflammatory behaviour, called for the Shin Bet head to be fired, triggering a rebuke on Friday from the defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Bar’s letter focused on Jewish extremists known as the “hilltop youth”, violent militants who have been conducting a campaign of murder, arson and intimidation against Palestinians on the West Bank, aimed at driving them from their land, furthering the far right’s pursuit of complete annexation.

Bar said their actions should not be described as criminality but as terrorism.

“It isn’t crime because it’s the use of violence to create intimidation, to spread fear. That is terror,” he wrote, describing how the campaign had “significantly expanded” in the absence of an adequate police response and with the connivance of some national leaders. The militants had gone from using “cigarette lighters to the weapons of war”, the security chief said, adding that some of those weapons had been provided by the state.

The terror campaign, the letter said, was “a large stain on Judaism and on all of us”.

Bar warned the hilltop youth had gone “from evading the security forces to attacking the security forces, from cutting themselves off from the establishment to receiving legitimacy from certain officials in the establishment”.

Source: Israeli security chief condemns ‘terrorism’ of militant settlers | Israel | The Guardian