Tamara Nassar
The Electronic Intifada / August 22, 2024
When a group of more than 100 Jewish pogromists, masked and armed with pistols and automatic rifles, killed a Palestinian, injured others and burned homes in the Palestinian town of Jit in the northern occupied West Bank last week, the Israeli government swiftly condemned them.
“It is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding settlement community and the entire settlement and the name and status of Israel in the world,” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office reportedly called for the arrest and trial of “those responsible for any offense.”
Indeed, a grand total of four Jewish settlers were arrested.
The settlers shot at Palestinian villagers, threw stones at their homes and set fire to their vehicles and homes, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported.
Settlers shot 23-year-old Rashid Mahmoud al-Sadeh in the chest, killing him instantly.
An hour into the settler assault, Israeli forces joined the attack, violently dispersing Palestinians and “hindering them from extinguishing the fires engulfing their homes and vehicles.”
The Israeli forces “fired live bullets and tear gas canisters into the air and took no action to halt the settlers’ rampage.” Instead, they made sure settlers securely withdrew from the village.
Israeli occupation forces sealed the entrances to the village, blocking ambulances and first responders.
“This crime is part of a broader range of violence fueled by the ongoing incitement campaign by Israeli ministers,” PCHR said.
“Such attacks are propelled by the institutionalized impunity for settler violence amid unabated support from Israel’s top political and military echelons.”
The settlers are the state
But the Israeli government claims that a handful of settlers are bad apples in an otherwise “law-abiding settlement” barrel, is an attempt to distract from who the settlers actually serve, and to whitewash the settlement project as a whole.
The settlers are the foot soldiers of the Israeli colonizer state and as the recent attack on Jit illustrates, they work hard in glove with the army.
The surge in settler violence since 7 October is not caused by a minority of rogue actors, as sanctions imposed by the US and some European states would have people believe.
The United States, France, the United Kingdom and other allies of Israel who have constantly supported its actions in Gaza announced sanctions on a small number of Jewish settlers in recent months.
This is an apparent attempt to divert attention from their complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, while falsely convey the impression that settler violence is caused by a few bad apples. The sanctions, if at all serious, should be against Israel and its leaders, not a few individuals.
Settlers are essential to Israel’s policy of settler-colonization, which is inherently violent, and is accelerating as all eyes have been on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“Setter violence is inseparable from Israel’s broader policy to establish full sovereignty over the West Bank and continuing its plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians,” PCHR said.
What Herzog, the Israeli president, calls the “law-abiding settlement community” is a reference only to Israeli law – which is barely enforced on the settlers anyway.
In reality, Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights are illegal under international law and are considered a war crime.
In building settlements, Israel perpetuates human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian population, including home demolitions, forced displacement and theft of land.
Settlement on UNESCO site
Meanwhile, the Israeli government is advancing plans to construct Jewish-only settlements on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Battir, designated in 2014 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
UNESCO’s designation aimed to protect Battir’s unique, ancient agricultural landscape and culture from Israel’s plans to build its separation wall through it.
“The Battir cultural landscape encompasses ancient terraces, archaeological sites, rock-cut tombs, agricultural towers, and most importantly an intact water system, represented by a collection pool [and] channels,” UNESCO states. “The integrity of this traditional water system is guaranteed by the families of Battir, who depend on it.”
The world cultural body adds that “the water distribution system used by the families of Battir is a testament to an ancient egalitarian distribution system” that dates back to antiquity.
This month, the Civil Administration – the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation – unveiled a “blue line” map around Battir land, designating it for construction of the so-called Nahal Heletz settlement.
The “blue line” represents land the Israeli government purports is “state land,” and thus open for it to steal and colonize. Much of the land is private land held and cared for by Battir families for generations – as is the case with land all across the West Bank that Israel is colonizing.
Israel’s pseudo-legal maneuvers are a charade of legal process to prettify its outright theft of Palestinian land at gunpoint.
It aims “to legitimize the settlement enterprise,” settlement watchdog Peace Now states.
But Palestinians have no meaningful way to defend their rights through Israel’s court system, in which many of the judges are themselves settlers.
The occupation initially allocated 30 acres for the construction of the settlement. The new “blue line” seizes 150 acres more as “state land” and another 130 acres for potential future development, according to Peace Now – all within the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“The new settlement at Nahal Heletz will create an isolated enclave deep within Palestinian territory,” the group added. But it is undoubtedly only intended as a starting point for future expansion.
Nahal Heletz is one of five settlements approved by the Israeli cabinet in June, four of which had been outposts – a term Israel uses for small new colonies erected by settlers ostensibly in violation even of Israeli regulations.
“The pace of declarations of blue line boundaries and state land is unprecedented,” Peace Now says.
Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-far-right Israeli finance minister, and Netanyahu “are relentlessly advancing de facto annexation, blatantly disregarding the UNESCO Convention to which Israel is a signatory,” Peace Now says.
Facts on the ground
Asked last week about the planned settlement in Battir, US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that “every single one of these new settlements would impede Palestinian economic development and freedom of movement.”
Notably, Patel made no reference to Israel’s settlements violating international law.
When probed about whether US opposition to settlements would stop them from getting built, Patel brushed off settlement expansion as “unilateral Israeli actions” and suggested no US action to stop them.
“You’ve opposed hundreds of settlement announcements, and they are all then built. So what’s the point of repeatedly saying you oppose them?” BBC correspondent Tom Bateman asked.
“It is important for us to make clear our perspective and our point of view,” Patel responded.
This succinctly captures the process, which begins with supposedly “extremist” settlers stealing Palestinian land and culminates in facts on the ground that the United States is more than willing to tolerate.
The Israeli government allows and assists the settlers to establish outposts and then officially recognizes them.
Once recognized as official settlements by the Israeli government, the US responds with empty rhetoric about settlement expansion hindering the moribund “two-state solution.”
Settlers carried out at least 1,270 attacks against Palestinians since 7 October, according to UN monitoring group OCHA.
These include attacks resulting in injuries to Palestinians as well as property damage.
Settlers threaten Palestinians at gunpoint, vandalize their property, hamper their access to water, ruin their trees, damage their vehicles, steal their belongings and intimidate and physically attack them.
This violence is planned and calculated to terrorize Palestinians from farming or accessing their land, so the settlers can take it, the Israeli state can recognize the theft, and the United States can then urge Palestinians to “compromise” by giving the land up in a future “peace” deal.
From 7 October 2023 to mid-August this year, Israel had demolished, confiscated or forced the demolition of over 1,400 Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied West Bank, more than a third of them inhabited buildings.
That is double the number of demolitions compared with the same period before 7 October.
These demolitions have driven about 3,200 Palestinians out of their homes, 1,400 of them children.
Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada
