JERUSALEM: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has frozen funds for Arab towns and Palestinian education programmes in East Jerusalem, citing crime and safety fears and prompting accusations of racism.

Smotrich, a key member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious government, said on Monday some of the budget funds meant for Arab local councils were a political pay-off by the previous cabinet that could end up in the hands of “criminals and terrorists”.

“The priorities of our national government… are different from those of the previous leftist government and we should not apologise for that,” said Smotrich, head of the pro-settler Religious Zionism party.

Lawmaker Mansour Abbas who heads the United Arab List accused Smotrich of racism. “Arab citizens are entitled to those funds, which were meant to close the gaps between Arab and Jewish communities,” he said.

Forces demolish home of alleged attacker; minister brushes off US terrorism label

Demolishes home

Israel’s army said on Tuesday it demolished the home of a Palesti­nian accused of killing a soldier and his brother in the occupied West Bank.

Overnight incursion by Israeli army to destroy the residence of Abdel Fatah Khroushah in the Askar camp for Palestinian refugees, in the northern city of Nablus, the military said.

After the military blew up his residence, smoke billowed across the densely populated neighbourhood and neighbours inspected the damage.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said six Palestinians were wounded. It said Israeli forces targeted one of its ambulances with rubber bullets and tear gas.

The army had accused Khroushah of shooting dead two Israeli settlers in February.

‘Terror attack’

An Israeli official brushed off on Tuesday the rare US use of the term “terror attack” to condemn the killing of a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank.

“We strongly condemn yesterday’s terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers,” the US State Department’s Near East Bureau said on Saturday.

Police initially accused the settlers of “deliberate or depraved-indifference homicide” with a racist motivation, but a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netan­yahu’s security cabinet argued that culpability for the Burqa death was far from clear.

“I wouldn’t advise treating the US definition as a precise professional definition. At the end of the day, they are not drawing on intelligence, but on media reports,” said Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a former counterterrorism chief for Israel’s Shin Bet security service.

The State Department appeared disinclined on Monday to elaborate on its sharpened censure over the Burqa killing.

“The thinking is that it was a terror attack, and we are concerned about it, and that’s why we called it that,” spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2023