Settler attacks on Palestinians soar, challenging Israeli coalition

On a rock-strewn slope, on land his family long has cultivated, Jibrin Abu Aram pushes a boulder to clear a path for the tractor plowing the chestnut brown earth.

The Palestinian farmer says he had feared coming to the field after having been attacked there recently by a group of Jewish settlers throwing stones.

“They told me to leave, to go to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, but I said, ‘I’m from here,’” says Mr. Abu Aram, who lives in the nearby village of Qawawis.

It was not the first time, he says, that he’s been attacked by settlers, and mounting tensions have him so distressed that he says he barely sleeps at night. So this time he asked pro-Palestinian Israeli activists for protection.

A pair stands close by, keeping watch, a video camera at the ready.

Over the last two years, violence perpetrated by settlers against either Palestinians or their property – uprooting olive trees, burning crops, stabbing sheep – has spiked by some 150%, according to Israeli Defense Ministry figures.

The settlers’ intention, say observers, is to take over Palestinian land by intimidation. The attacks reportedly are carried out mostly by residents of unsanctioned settlement outposts, who say the violence has been overstated. The real threat, they say, is from Palestinians trying to steal state land for themselves, and also that when settlers have resorted to violence, it’s usually in self-defense.

The settlers conducting attacks act largely with impunity. Although key government ministers have vowed a more forceful response, noticeable change on the ground has so far been absent, according to analysts and Israeli human rights groups. And the challenge to the fragile young government has become increasingly open and divisive.

New settler ideology

In the windswept, scrubby landscape of the Southern Hebron Hills, the extremist settlers are emboldened by a radical interpretation of religious nationalism that preaches the land is their biblical birthright to seize, even by force. In their view, the state and even mainstream settler leaders have not been hard-line enough and in turn have lost their moral standing.

“If your entire worldview is organized around religious concepts that say the entire Land of Israel is in the hands of Jews because God wanted it this way, then there is not much space for Palestinian land rights,” says Perle Nicolle-Hasid, a doctoral student at Hebrew University researching radicalism in Israel.

The ideology of those living on unsanctioned outposts and hilltops departs from that of the settlement movement’s founders, who viewed “the State of Israel as holy, so one cannot raise a hand against a soldier, and one is obligated to participate in the state as much as possible,” she says.

Outpost settlers “will tell you the State of Israel is relinquishing the Land of Israel, so it’s not as holy as they thought, and this further justifies their position regarding the Palestinians.”

The increased violence, and that extremist settler mindset, have set up a contentious issue for Israel’s broad new government, which includes a prime minister who was once a settlement movement leader, and left-wing and Islamist members.

Fractured government response

Coalition frictions were on display this week as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett appeared to join right-wing critics of Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, of the center-left Labor party, who said he had discussed the rising settler violence with a visiting American diplomat.

West Bank settlers are “the defensive bulwark for all of us, and we must strengthen and support them,” Mr. Bennett said Tuesday. “There are marginal elements in every community, and they should be dealt with using all means, but we must not generalize about an entire community.”

Last month, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, a centrist, called an emergency meeting of security chiefs to coordinate more forceful action to protect Palestinians. In videotaped footage of recent settler clashes with Palestinians, soldiers can be seen failing to intervene. “Hate crimes are the root from which terror grows, and we need to root them out,” he said.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Mr. Bennett’s principal coalition partner who is in line to take over as prime minister in 2023, described a particularly violent incident in September as “terror” and called for the “violent and dangerous fringe” perpetrating such attacks to be brought to justice.

Yet Talia Sasson, a former chief state prosecutor, says this government’s response has fallen short and that despite the declarations, no security crackdown has followed.

She says army commanders don’t want to be caught in the middle of an ideological conflict between Jewish Israelis for and against the settlements: “This job puts them in the middle of the conflict ... and they don’t want to be there.”

On Wednesday it was reported that Mr. Gantz and Mr. Barlev had agreed that hundreds of soldiers would be assigned policing duties in the West Bank so as to free police to tackle the settler violence.

For Lior Amihai, director of Yesh Din, an Israeli advocacy group, Mr. Gantz’s previous words felt empty. “The state plays a role here because it does not enforce the law on settlers. Instead it rewards them and is largely silent (about the violence). Investigations, arrests of settlers are rare – indictments even more so,” he says.

Havat Maon

Residents of the outposts, beginning with a handful of radical youth pitching tents on scattered hilltops across the West Bank in the early 2000s, have evolved into families living in hardscrabble farming villages.

Aware of their reputation as fringe elements in Israeli society – including among mainstream settlers – they have tried in recent years to rebrand themselves as embodying the ideals of Israel’s pioneer generation, sacrificing comfort to fortify the frontier. A Facebook page features advocacy posts and videos.

Havat Maon, an outpost of some 20 families, has a counterculture vibe. Wind chimes dangle on porches, children dance to thumping techno music, and residents describe themselves as artists and musicians who also work the land, herding goats and tending vineyards. The men typically have beards and long hair; the women cover theirs (per religious custom) in colorful scarves.

On a porch across from a sheep pen, a few friends in their 20s are hanging out. One, Alon, says he moved here seven years ago, drawn by the opportunity to build a meaningful life in a pastoral setting.

“See how quiet it is here?” he asks, gesturing toward the view of hills edging into a forest below. Unlike mainstream settlements, there is no fence, he boasts. “We don’t want to have a feeling we’re closed in. We want things to feel open and free.”

He says his friends do not engage in violent encounters, but when incidents occur, he blames the Palestinians, often instigated by Israeli leftists. He says it’s important to recognize the outpost population is itself diverse – some are messianic and disconnected from mainstream Israel, others, including himself, are not. But they do, he says, share a basic ideology that Jews have a right to live here.

The most severe recent violence took place nearby, when dozens of settlers, masked to shield their identity but reportedly from Havat Maon and Avigayil, swarmed the Bedouin village of al-Mufaqara, after clashes between villagers and settlers.

Videos show them throwing stones into houses – one of which hit a 3-year-old boy, leaving him unconscious – and smashing car windows. Some Palestinians retaliated with stones. Reportedly there were injuries on both sides.

Alon said in incidents like this, one sees the videos but not what happened before. Citing past attacks in nearby settlements by Palestinians, including killings, one of his friends adds, “There’s too much trauma” to seek reconciliation.

Yaakov Nagen, a settler who does outreach with Palestinians and believes that is the way forward, has had a very different reaction to the surge in violence, as, he says, have other mainstream settlers. “Personally, all the acts of violence have horrified me,” he says.

Rabbi Nagen says traumas suffered by both Jews and Palestinians from decades of tension and aggression have led to “a demonization of the other,” which facilitates violence.

Susiya

Last month, a new playground in the Bedouin village of Susiya was taken over by settlers who said it was built illegally. Soldiers followed and blocked residents from entering, declaring the whole village a closed military zone.

“As Palestinians you feel constantly threatened here that our lives can be taken over not just by settler violence but by the state itself, which lets the violence continue,” says Nasser Nawaja, a Susiya resident and field researcher for B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group. 

Noting the Israeli volunteers who come daily to protect Susiya, some in his home as he spoke, he says: “Settlers have attacked them as well. We are all in this battle together.”