IT TOOK the death of a baby to push the Israeli government to get tough on Jewish extremism. Eighteen-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was killed on July 31st in an arson attack carried out by Jewish vigilantes in the Palestinian village of Douma in the West Bank. Two days later the Israeli security cabinet approved “special measures” against Jewish terrorism suspects. These include the detention without trial of suspected extremists, a holdover from the pre-1948 British Mandate; three suspects were swiftly interned for six months. Government sources say that the security services have also been given the power to use a limited degree of physical coercion in interrogation, something permitted by Israeli courts in “ticking bomb” cases.

This is not the first time the Israeli government has sanctioned the extreme measures that are routinely used against Palestinian groups for Jewish militants. For instance, a number of extremists were rounded up without trial on the eve of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

In recent years there have been dozens of arson attacks, though not fatal ones, on Palestinian homes, mosques and churches. These did not lead Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet to unleash the full weight of the security services, until the toddler was burnt alive and his brother and parents critically injured. Human-rights groups and law enforcement officials will feel vindicated: they have long accused the government of pandering to the Jewish settlers on the West Bank.

There are two views in the security establishment about how much of a threat Jewish extremists now pose. One sees the recent attack as just the latest, albeit by far the nastiest, “price tag” reprisal, a term used to describe attacks carried out by extreme settlers in retaliation for the dismantling of those outposts in the West Bank that are considered illegal by the Israeli authorities. (All settlements there are considered illegal under international law.)

A darker view is that a new and fiercer strain of Jewish messianism is emerging. Shin Bet, the internal security service, believes the arsonists were part of a group named the Revolt. This group supposedly wants to foment a wider religious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and eventually cause the downfall of the elected government and its replacement by a Jewish kingdom. Israel has faced this kind of threat before: in the early 1980s a group of settlers placed explosives in cars of Palestinian mayors. An offshoot of the same group planned to blow up Palestinian buses and destroy the much-revered mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

One of the three interned Israelis is suspected of connection to the Douma attack and another, Meir Ettinger, is the alleged leader of the Revolt. Whether they represent a new wave of messianism or are just leaders of a small group of impressionable youths, it is hard to ignore the permissive culture in which they have operated. Senior police and soldiers have complained for years that their hands are tied by political and legal constraints in dealing with violence and incitement to violence by settlers. When charged, suspects have been let off by courts, or given lenient sentences.

Mr Netanyahu’s record on all this is mixed. He immediately condemned the murder and visited the Dawabsheh family in hospital. But he recently promoted one of his political lieutenants, who in the past leaked word of police raids to radical settlers. Ministers and coalition members of parliament have expressed support in recent weeks for violent demonstrations against the demolition of homes deemed illegal in the Beit El settlement. The politicians have not been sanctioned for it, and the prime minister has authorised the building of 300 new housing units in Beit El in compensation.

On election day in March Mr Netanyahu warned of Israeli Arabs “flocking to the ballot boxes.” He has since expressed regret for his words. Now he seems to be cracking down hard on extreme settlers. So as well as being loathed by Palestinians, he must contend with radical Jews, who now see him as a traitor to the cause.