JERUSALEM – Israeli police said Sunday that they had arrested a 37-year-old American immigrant, a West Bank settler, and charged him in an array of killings and terrorist attacks over the last 12 years, including the murders of two Palestinians, the bombing of a leftist Israeli professor’s home and the maiming of a 15-year-old boy who belongs to a community of Jews who believe in Jesus.

The suspect, Jack Teitel, a father of four and a computer technician and Web site designer, was born in Florida, the son of a military dentist. He went back and forth between Israel and the United States starting in the 1990s, immigrating here in 2000. His parents followed a year later and live in a different West Bank settlement.

The murders with which he has been charged, of a taxi driver in Jerusalem and a shepherd south of the West Bank city of Hebron, took place in 1997. The attacks on the teenager and on the professor occurred last year. Teitel is also charged with having attacked police officers on several occasions.

The arrest occurred several weeks ago but was subject to a court blackout until Sunday. The police said they found weapons, ammunition and a weapons laboratory in Teitel’s house in the Shvut Rachel settlement.

Teitel, who goes by the Hebrew name Yaakov, told the police that the murders in 1997 were in response to Palestinian terrorist attacks. He was detained in 2000 for those killings but freed because of insufficient evidence. It was only after the bombing of the professor’s house that the police began to note similarities in the attacks and picked up his trail again.

The Israeli boy who was badly wounded a year and a half ago, Ami Ortiz, is still recovering from an explosive in a gift basket traditionally given out on the Jewish holiday of Purim. His family is part of a small and mistrusted community of messianic Jews who consider themselves Jewish but believe in Jesus.

The professor whose house was pipe-bombed, Zeev Sternhell, is a vocal critic of the settlers and the political right. Sternhell, a professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was slightly wounded.

Reacting to the arrest, Sternhell said that Sunday was an important day in Israeli democracy and that he hoped Teitel would be treated no differently from any other terrorist suspect, meaning Palestinians charged with such activity.