Court orders release of settler accused of attacking Palestinian after 38 days in custody

The Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday ordered the immediate release without restrictive conditions of Tal Yinon Dardik, a suspect in an attack on Palestinians in March, after he spent 38 days in custody due to administrative restraining orders against him.

Following his release from custody, Dardik will remain bound by measures imposed on him by IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, which prevent him from entering any areas of the West Bank except for the city settlement of Modiin Illit, where he will be required to report to the local police station twice a day.

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Dardik is suspected of a brutal attack in Khirbet Humsa, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, where he, along with other extremist settlers, allegedly stripped a Palestinian victim, zip-tied his genitals, and paraded him around the village. Dardik denies taking part in the incident.

He was initially placed under house arrest outside of his illegal settlement farming outpost of Kfar Tarfon on June 9, but was put in a detention cell under an administrative restraining order in early July after repeatedly violating the terms of his detention.

An administrative order enables authorities to hold or restrict suspects indefinitely without charge. The measure is used almost exclusively against Palestinians after Defense Minister Israel Katz sought to end its use against Jewish extremists.

Dardik had insisted that any house arrest be served at his home at the unauthorized farming outpost of Kfar Tarfon in the West Bank’s Area B — closer to the site of the attack on Khirbet Humsa — but Bluth didn’t want to let him go back there.

On Sunday, however, the Jerusalem District Court rejected Bluth’s attempt to keep him away from Kfar Tarfon, upholding a military tribunal’s ruling that the terms of his alternate house arrest, at the home of his mother-in-law, in the central West Bank settlement of Adei Ad, were untenable because she did not want him in the house.

It nevertheless acknowledged that Bluth’s June 9 administrative house arrest order had been “justified, proportionate and reasonable,” and that Dardik was evidently “dangerous to the security of the region and therefore must be under house arrest.”

Bluth and the Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office had appealed to the District Court after the IDF’s West Bank military appeals court on July 26 accepted Dardik’s argument about the impracticality of the detention order.

After the military tribunal accepted Dardik’s appeal, Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered officials not to renew his detention, and called on the military to find an alternative solution that would let Dardik out of jail without posing a threat. Katz also visited Dardik in his prison cell last month, according to Hebrew media.

Amid right-wing anger at Bluth for seeking to extend the restrictions on Dardik, Katz vowed on a pro-government TV talk show last week to replace the general. Katz’s announcement sparked an outcry, with critics accusing the defense minister of pre-election meddling in IDF appointments.

He backtracked after IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Eyal Zamir said Bluth would remain Central Command chief.

Settler violence has mounted in recent years, with near-daily, sometimes deadly attacks taking place throughout the West Bank, but few suspects have been arrested and charged. Critics accuse the government of condoning or even encouraging the attacks.

Shin Bet figures from earlier this year found that three times more Palestinians were victims of nationalist attacks in the West Bank than Jews.

The military recorded 867 incidents of nationalist crime and settler violence in 2025, up from 682 incidents in 2024.

Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.

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