In their videotaped rampages, the violent young Jewish settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank are typically seen clad in religious ritual garments worn over their shirts, their faces hidden by balaclavas or scarves.
Recently, as they have become more emboldened, they are also seen wearing army fatigues, their faces uncovered, and armed not only with their usual weaponry of stones and large sticks, but with guns.
Violence – in the form of physical beatings; setting fire to homes, mosques, vehicles and property; and uprooting trees – is a tool they employ in their campaign to terrify and exhaust the Palestinians. Their goal is to force them to abandon their homes, farms, groves and factories, particularly those in the West Bank’s so-called Area C, which contains both Jewish and Palestinian communities.
Why We Wrote This
In Israeli descriptions of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, use of the term “Jewish terrorism” has been rising. A plurality of Israelis say the attackers have been handled too leniently. But the settlers have strong allies in the government.
Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, have strongly condemned the settler attacks, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned they could potentially impact the delicate ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Despite these warnings and the high stakes involved, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appeared at least hesitant, and possibly politically incapable, of reining in the attacks.
Settler assaults against Palestinians have been carried out for years, but since the Gaza War broke out with Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and the world focused on Gaza, they have escalated to unprecedented levels. And since the Gaza ceasefire was reached in mid-October, coinciding with the Palestinians’ traditional olive harvest period, they have spiked even higher.
The term “Jewish terrorism” has been rising in internal Israeli discourse to describe the wave of settler violence, and condemnation has also come from the United Nations, especially of the fall surge. According to the U.N., there were more than 260 incidents that caused injury or property damage in October alone, on top of more than 2,600 documented settler attacks previously this year. The world body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the October figures marked the highest number of such violent attacks since they began keeping records in 2006.
According to U.N. data, settler violence has pushed more than 3,200 Palestinians from their homes since the war in Gaza began.
Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP
Public opinion and political will
Meanwhile, the truce that halted the bulk of fighting in Gaza is increasingly fragile as the sides begin to move toward a second phase, as is the one between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And a majority of Israelis fear another war will erupt in the coming year, according to a survey published on Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. Of those polled, 59% believe a new Palestinian uprising could erupt in the West Bank in the near future.
In the same poll, 45% of Israelis said the settlers are treated too leniently, compared with 22% who say too harshly, and 21% who say they are handled appropriately.
Yet, despite warnings from some of Israel’s security establishment of the potential dangers from this level of lawlessness, bloodshed, and extremism – some of it even directed toward Israel’s own soldiers – analysts say the Netanyahu government is unlikely to rein in the attacks.
For one, say the analysts, there’s a lack of political will from within the nationalist and religious coalition, for whom a primary goal is Jewish settlement across the West Bank. Making up the ultranationalist flank of the government are two key ministers who are themselves settlers: Itamar Ben-Gvir, a longtime provocateur turned minister of national security, in charge of Israel’s police force; and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also tasked with overseeing settlements and the West Bank.
“Most Israelis want to see [the attacks] end, but the government is [not making that happen] because they don’t want to lose the coalition, fearing [that] if the extremists within do not get what they want, they will leave the government,” says Yohanan Tzoreff, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“They [the government] think that it is very important to have control of this land, and these young people are doing something which, from their point of view, also serves their interests and … so they are not ready to work against them,” he argues.
In turn, the extremist settlers “feel there’s no real power preventing them from doing what they are doing, especially since they are not facing any real punishment,” adds Mr. Tzoreff, former head of the Palestinian-Arab Division in the Ministry of Intelligence and Strategy.
Israelis are entering an election year, further emboldening the extremists, some analysts say.
According to the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, which documents and disseminates data on human rights violations in the West Bank, only 3% of the 1,600 cases of settler violence recorded between 2005 and 2023 resulted in a conviction in court.
And, citing the low number of cases prosecuted, the group says Israeli law enforcement has been negligent in doing even the most rudimentary part of police work to crack down on ideologically motivated violence.
Netanyahu: “We are a nation of laws”
When Mr. Netanyahu did speak out against the settler violence, it was about a week after a photo of a 70-something Jewish Israeli named Oded Yedaya, his face bloodied and fractured by a masked settler, went viral on Israeli social media.
Mr. Yedaya, whom Mr. Netanyahu knows personally from their days in the military, was in the West Bank village of Beita with other Israeli activists in an effort to deter, or at least document, settler attacks against Palestinians harvesting their olives.
As activists like himself and even soldiers trying to break up the violence are increasingly targeted by settlers, he said, “the moment may have come when settlers are trying to kill Jews.”
Mr. Yedaya’s daughter Ella wrote an open letter to the prime minister asking him to condemn what was going on.
“You are responsible for those terrorists who almost killed my father yesterday,” she wrote in the letter shared on social media. “You have been letting this kind of terrorism run rampant for years without intervention. You brought those who support burning villages into the coalition. … You also have the ability to stop this.”
Mr. Netanyahu promised that Israel “will take very forceful action against the riots against [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers – against Palestinians – because we are a nation of laws, and a nation of laws acts in accordance with the law.”
He described those carrying out the attacks as “a minority that goes into Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and does not represent the large community of law-abiding, loyal settlers.”
Yet, Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel for the International Crisis Group, sees the government’s attempt to describe the phenomenon as being carried out by fringe elements within the settlement movement as convenient cover for what she says is its de facto goal of West Bank annexation.
If Israel “can take down Hezbollah and bomb Tehran, I am sure they can handle a few hundred radicals,” she says. “I am pretty sure if the rule of law was important to them, they could do something about it.”
The army understands the instability the violence sows is not good for Israel’s own safety, Ms. Zonszein says. But, she adds, there are forces in the government who want the Palestinians out of their homes. Their thinking is, “How long can Palestinians deal with no livelihood, no freedom of movement?”
