Israeli release of extremists behind Huwara rampage draws outrage

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has categorically denounced the Israeli judiciary’s decision to release most of Jewish extremists suspected of participating in the settler rampage in a West Bank Palestinian town over the weekend.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement on Friday that “the Israeli judiciary’s decision to release the terrorist settlers, who carried out the Huwara pogrom in Nablus, confirms once again the occupying Israeli regime’s fascism and racism against the Palestinian nation.”

He added that, “The act also shows the regime’s complicity in the crime perpetrated against Palestinians before the eyes of the international community, and thus emboldens Israeli settler militias to exhibit more aggression.”

Qassem called on the international community to take serious and practical measures to punish Israeli authorities, hold them accountable for the Huwara pogrom as well as other crimes against Palestinian people, and act beyond words of condemnation.

On Thursday night, Israeli judicial officials released most of the Israeli settlers who had been arrested against the backdrop of the pogrom they carried out over the weekend in the Palestinian town of Huwwara, south of Nablus.

Media sources said the settlers were released based on a court ruling, which alleged there was no enough evidence to convict the settlers, despite the availability of tens of videos documenting the terrorist attack on the town, which resulted in martyring of a Palestinian aid worker, the injury of many others and the torching of hundreds of homes and vehicles.

MG