Israel frees extremist Jewish settler after 10-month detention

Israel's prison service says an extremist Jewish settler has been freed from jail after a 10-month detention.

Meir Ettinger was arrested last year following a deadly arson attack on a Palestinian West Bank home that killed two parents and their 18-month-old boy.

Ettinger was released on Wednesday. He has not been charged with any crime. Another man and a minor were indicted for the arson.

Despite his release, Ettinger must obey a night curfew for the next four months, and he has been banned from contacting a list of 92 acquaintances.

The 24-year-old extremist is the grandson of US-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, Israel's most notorious Jewish extremist, whose ultranationalist party was banned from Israel's parliament for its racist views in 1988. He was assassinated by an Arab gunman in New York in 1990.

Ettinger has been accused of heading an extremist movement seeking to bring about religious "redemption" through attacks on Christian sites and Palestinian property.

However, he has in past days denied on his blog the existence of an underground Jewish organisation, but has defended attacks on "crimes" such as the existence of churches and mosques branded as "places of pagan worship".

The attack on the Dawabsheh family home, in which Ettinger was involved, has fuelled a still-ongoing eruption of street violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

Palestinians say the violence is the result of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation, more than two decades of failed peace efforts and a lack of hope for gaining independence any time soon.

Agencies contributed to this report