Decision comes as thousands of Israelis protest against radicalised fringe after deaths of Palestinian toddler and Israeli teenager

Israel has announced it intends to detain Jewish terror suspects without trial as the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, came under pressure to respond to the deaths in separate attacks of a Palestinian toddler and Israeli teenager.

Thousands of Israeli people took to the streets over the weekend to warn against a radicalised and violent fringe growing within the country, following the arson attack on a Palestinian family home in the West Bank by extremists and the stabbing of six people at a Jerusalem Gay Pride march by a suspect identified as an ultra-Orthodox Jew.

One of those stabbed in Jerusalem, Shira Banki, 16, died as a result of her wounds on Sunday. She had been in critical condition since being stabbed in the back by a suspect, Yishai Shlissel, who carried out the attack just weeks after being released from a 10-year prison sentence for stabbing participants in the 2005 march.



Signs held at the weekend protests read: “Hate kills” and “Homophobia and racism are the same violence”.



The Israeli defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said on Sunday he had instructed the Shin Bet security service, police and military to apply “administrative detention” on rightwing Jewish citizens suspected of involvement in terror attacks against Palestinians as a direct response to the firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma that left 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh dead and critically injured his brother and parents.



Death of 18-month-old in arson attack heightens tensions in West Bank Read more

Israel currently applies administrative detention solely to Palestinians and its extension to Israelis reflects the government’s frustration at the failure to track down the assailants. No suspects have been arrested in connection with Friday’s arson attack and no group has claimed responsibility.



A senior security official told Israeli Radio on Sunday: “There is no choice but to treat suspects of hate crimes against Palestinians the same way as Palestinian suspects of terror.”

Administrative detention allows for arrests without charges and enables the incarceration of suspects for undefined periods of time without sufficient evidence to try them. It theoretically allows investigators to gather evidence while preventing further attacks, but Israel has been accused of abusing the procedure to keep militants behind bars without trial.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 391 Palestinians were in detention without trial as of May.

If enforced, the move will give Israeli officials far more leeway to arrest Jewish citizens suspected of being involved in the attack in Duma and potentially other “price tag” attacks – where graffiti is left at the site of the attack – and other hate crimes against Palestinians.

“As always, each case of administrative detention will have to be approved by the courts, but by invoking this the minister is taking action consistent with his effort to exact the full measure of the law against these people,” a spokesman for Ya’alon told Reuters.

The separate attacks have put a spotlight on Jewish extremists, while the firebombing further inflamed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, with clashes breaking out in various cities.

Netanyahu condemned both attacks and called the firebombing “terrorism” – a word usually used by Israelis to refer to violence by Palestinians. On Sunday, he spoke of “zero tolerance” for such acts. “We are determined to vigorously fight manifestations of hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side,” he said at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday morning.

But many have accused his government of failing to address the problem of Jewish extremism and of going dangerously far in its support for rightwing settler groups.



Ali’s uncle, Nasser Dawabsheh, called on the Israeli government to protect the Palestinian population in the West Bank in an address to a rally in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Saturday night. “They burned a family that was sleeping quietly, a family that does not believe in violence,” he said.

“Netanyahu expressed his condolences but we ask for protection for Duma and for other Palestinian villages. Why was Ali killed? He was 18 months old, what did he do? What did he do to the settlers? We ask that this [incident] mark the end of the suffering of our people.”

Ali’s grandfather Hussein, whose daughter Reham is still in a critical condition in Tel Hashomer hospital after sustaining third-degree burns over 90% of her body, told Israel Radio on Sunday morning that he did not want “to enter another cycle of violence”. He said four-year-old Ahmad’s condition had improved and he had regained consciousness.

In recent years there have been hundreds of cases of “price tag” attacks and other incidents of settler violence, with almost no indictments filed – 17 churches and mosques have been set ablaze by Jewish extremists in the past four years, yet not a single person has been arrested.

Netanyahu last year rejected a proposal to deem perpetrators of “price tag” attacks as members of a terrorist organisation and to allow for their administrative detention, but they were deemed to be “illegal organisations”, which gives security officials more authority to monitor suspects.



He implied at the time such measures were out of the question since it would mean Jewish terrorists were somehow comparable to terror groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

• This article was amended on 3 August 2015 to correct the number of Palestinians believed by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem to be held in detention without trial