[6][7][8] The youths officially claim that the acts are committed to "exact a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their settlement enterprise".

[20] The "price tag" concept and violence have been publicly rejected by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,[21][22] who have demanded that those responsible be brought to justice.

[36][37][38] In May 2014, Shin Bet said the price-tag hate crimes were the handiwork of about 100 individuals mainly hailing from the Yitzhar settlement and hilltop outposts, and were inspired by the ideas of rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.

According to Harel, since the Gaza and Amona withdrawals:the extreme right has sought to establish a 'balance of terror', in which every state action aimed at them – from demolishing a caravan in an outpost to restricting the movements of those suspected of harassing Palestinian olive harvesters – generates an immediate, violent reaction.

"[53] In the wake of the dismantlement of Noam Federman's farm outside Hebron in October 2008, opponents of the evacuation called for revenge attacks against the security forces, telling soldiers "you should all be defeated by your enemies, you should all become Gilad Shalit, you should all be killed, you should all be slaughtered, because that's what you deserve", and "set a price tag" on the event by stoning soldiers and local Palestinians, wounding two Israel Border Police officers, vandalizing cars, and destroying graves in a Muslim graveyard.

[55] According to Yesh Din, which monitored a selection of incidents over 4 years, Israel Police did not file a single indictment following 69 cases that included price tag operations, where thousands of olive trees were burnt down between 2005 and 2009.

[60][61] In an article published in May 2010, Zar stated that these actions represent a legitimate struggle which includes mainly the blocking of intersections and roads in order to disrupt the regular operations of Israeli security forces, preventing them from demolishing settler houses.

[63] In September 2011 the Shin Beit advised the government to withhold funding from one yeshiva, Od Yosef Chai in the settlement of Yitzhar, on the basis of intelligence reports that its rabbis encourage students to attack Arabs, including 'price tag' assaults.

In response to one on the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion early in October 2012, Rabbi Gilad Kariv commented:"This price tag epidemic threatens to become a routine part of Israeli public life, causing moral, social and international damage.

"[67] In December 2012, two yarmulke-clad youths, one a candidate for the Shin Bet security service, handed out flyers, promoting price-tag attacks against Palestinians, at an IDF induction centre in Tel Hashomer.

[68] In June 2013, according to Zehava Gal-On, the Israeli Cabinet was pressured, despite a recommendation by the Attorney-General to the contrary, to define perpetrators of such attacks as members of "forbidden organizations" as opposed to "terror groups".

The implications are significant, in that belonging to the latter carries prison sentences of up to 20 years, whereas "forbidden organizations" only risk confiscation of their property, and under the definition, arrested members of price tag activist groups can avoid criminal prosecution.

[77] Israeli settlers were accused by an Arab farmer of having gathered his sheep into an area thick with brush and setting fire to the bushes, burning alive his 12 pregnant ewes.

While visiting his family at the Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood in Jerusalem, he phoned the police to complain that someone had slashed the tires of his car and sprayed it with Arabic graffiti reading 'slaughter the Jews' (itbah al-Yahud).

[86] The Israeli government has set up a national task force, forming part of the elite Lahav police unit, to coordinate investigations and gather intelligence on these attacks.

[89] Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, in June 2012, commented to Army Radio that the authorities were not doing enough to crack down on "price tag" vandalism, or what he called "counterterrorism".

[90] The opposition leader in the Knesset, Shelly Yachimovich, commented in mid-June, after another tire-slashing price tag attack on Palestinian vehicles that "It is not logical that Israel, which is blessed with intelligence and operational capabilities that are among the best in the world, cannot catch an extremist group that causes indescribable damage.

"[91] In response to such allegations, a Shin Bet officer has stated that finding culprits for price tag incidents is extremely difficult because the hilltop youth believed to be behind much of the vandalism are harder to penetrate and recruit as informers than has been the case with Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

[92] In January 2014, following an incident in which a groups of vandals from an illegal settlement near Esh Kodesh were captured by Palestinian villagers and handed over to the IDF, Uri Misgav wrote that "the strongest army in the Middle East along with the Shin Bet security service, with all its effectiveness, have not been able to rein in" the settler militia thought responsible for these assaults "over all these long years".

[93] In January 2016, Corporal Elad Sela, an Etzion Brigade soldier from the settlement of Bat Ayin, who had been arrested in March 2015, was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months imprisonment for passing on secret information to price tag activists concerning future IDF operations.

[94] In 2006, the Supreme Court of Israel laid down a decision that the State was obliged to "devote manpower for the protection of Palestinian property, must open an immediate inquiry when reports of harassment are received, and send out patrols by security forces to locate such activities."

"[98] The Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, visited a mosque in Yasuf 2009 to express his revulsion at the idea of price tag attacks and to deliver a Quran to the local imam.

The Israeli President Shimon Peres, accompanied by Israel's two chief rabbis, visited the mosque, and after surveying the damage stated he was "full of shame".

[101] Dan Margalit writing for the pro-government newspaper Israel Hayom in January 2014 asked "why the voice of the leaders of the settlement movement and its leading rabbis has fallen silent".

[72][114][115][116] In a 2011 analysis, Zeev Sternhell argues that while the vast majority in Israel is disgusted by these attacks, and the right is distancing itself from those torching mosques, there is little evidence that they condemn the daily harassment of Palestinians by settlers.

The "price tag hooligans" are, he maintains, "the vanguard of the entire settlement movement settler" and "are increasingly reminiscent of phenomena in Europe in the interwar period.

[135] Shapira, while urging a "fierce defense" of outposts, holds the IDF responsible for the atmosphere in which such acts are undertaken, and for implementing a price tag policy against the yeshiva.

Education Ministry Director-General Dr. Shimshon Shoshani harshly criticized the establishments writing that "The students are involved in many violent acts against Palestinian residents and security forces, including during yeshiva study hours.

Such acts are, in his view, the "direct result" of racist remarks by Israeli politicians, humiliation of Arabs by the police and officials in government offices, and the general atmosphere these attitudes create.

His town's response, he affirmed would be different: "Here in Abu Ghosh, we implement a 'price tag' policy of a different kind: Wherever the hooligans destroy, we will build; whatever filth they leave behind, we will clean up.