Central Command chief said to warn Netanyahu again that settler violence could ignite the West Bank

The Times of Israel, carrying Channel 12 at 04:48 on Tuesday, reported that Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, the most senior Israeli officer in the West Bank, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials at a closed-door security assessment on Monday that mounting settler violence could ignite a broader escalation. “There has been a significant decline in the scale of [Palestinian] terrorism over the past two years, but there is one match that could ignite everything in an instant \u2013 nationalist crime,” Bluth is quoted as saying. He reportedly added: “The IDF’s attention is constantly being diverted to such incidents instead of thwarting Palestinian terrorism.” The remarks are single-sourced to Channel 12, from a closed forum, with no IDF confirmation in the material available; ToI’s own headline hedges with “said to warn.”

This is at least the second time the same general has delivered the same message to the same prime minister. On 1 May, Haaretz reported Bluth using blunter language in another closed forum, describing settler violence as “Jewish terrorism” and cautioning that “it’s quite a miracle the Palestinian public is still indifferent\u2026 but it won’t remain indifferent forever.” He had recently warned Netanyahu and the cabinet, per that report, that overall Palestinian terror levels were low but tensions were building beneath the surface. The ground record of the past 72 hours runs alongside: a house set on fire and spray-painted in Osarin, south of Nablus, on 23 August; two suspects arrested on 24 August over the assault of an elderly Palestinian amputee; and, on 21 August, two Palestinians seriously wounded in a settler raid near Hebron according to the Palestinian Red Crescent \u2014 a claim, not a confirmed event.

Assessment: The news is not the warning; it is the leak, and the fact that it has now happened twice in four months to a prime minister nine weeks from an election. Someone inside the security establishment is putting Bluth’s private words into Channel 12’s hands, and the choice of outlet and timing is part of the story. Note also what Bluth is quoted as objecting to: diverted operational attention, not the harm itself. That framing is what makes the warning sayable inside the room \u2014 and it is why readers should not mistake a commander’s resource complaint for a policy rupture. Until the IDF confirms, this remains television reporting a closed forum.