Given the increase in attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, several NGOs accuse the Israeli Army of actively supporting the violence of some Jewish settlers, spurred by the support they receive from far-right ministers.
Similar accusations appear in the report of a UN commission that yesterday accused both Israel and seven “Palestinian armed groups”, including Hamas, of committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” since December 7. October.
Israeli settlers have carried out 1,096 attacks in occupied territory between October 7 and March 31, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha). That is: an average of six attacks per day, against three attacks per day before October 7. In 2022, settler attacks averaged two per day.
Violent acts by Israeli settlers against Palestinians reached a record number in 2023, according to a count by the Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din.
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, 537 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority, the entity that has administered part of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank since 1994. On the Israeli side, 14 people died in Palestinian attacks, according to official figures from the Israeli Government.
Similar testimonials
Each attack leaves similar testimonies: armed settlers, sometimes dressed in the same khaki pants as the soldiers, attack Palestinian civilians, burn houses and cars, steal livestock, sometimes under the gaze of passive soldiers.
On April 13, hundreds of settlers attacked Douma, a Palestinian village in the central West Bank, and stabbed a resident after Israeli authorities announced they had found the body of an Israeli teenager from the Malajei HaShalom settlement, located about kilometers south of Duma. The Israeli Army announced on April 22 the arrest of a resident of Douma, accused of the murder of the 14-year-old boy.
During the attack on April 13, “Israeli forces were present in Douma to ensure the safety of the settlers and protect them,” Suleiman Dawabsheh, head of the council of this town of several thousand inhabitants, told AFP.
An Israeli military spokesman responded to AFP’s questions about what happened, indicating that the mission of the soldiers stationed in the West Bank is “to protect the material assets and lives of all inhabitants, and to disperse clashes” if not.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Israeli forces on April 16 to “immediately cease their active participation in and support” for attacks carried out by settlers and urged Israel to “prevent further attacks, particularly by charging to those responsible” for them.
Not counting those living in East Jerusalem, there are more than 490,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank, in settlements that the UN calls illegal under international law, and among three million Palestinians. The colonization process has been carried out under all governments since Israel conquered the West Bank in June 1967.
“Distinguishing settlers from soldiers has become very difficult”
In the occupied West Bank, “distinguishing settlers from soldiers has become very difficult,” Joel Carmel, head of the Israeli anti-occupation NGO Breaking the Silence, made up of retired soldiers, told AFP.
Carmel points out the sociological change that is occurring in the Army, where for a decade more Zionist and religious settlers have been observed in combat units and among senior officers.
Since October 7, “we see settlers in military uniforms” and violence is “increasingly extreme” in the West Bank, explains Ehud Krinis, an Israeli activist who helps Palestinians in the Hebron area.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), dedicated to the defense and promotion of human rights, accuses Israel of being responsible for the increase in settler violence since October 7.
Extreme right in the Government
HRW also investigated five attacks committed by settlers in five Palestinian towns between October and November 2023.
“The evidence shows that armed settlers, with the active participation of Army units, blocked roads and attacked Palestinian communities on several occasions: they detained, assaulted and tortured the inhabitants, expelling them from their homes and lands under threat,” the NGO concluded in April.
The arrival of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two central figures of the Israeli extreme right, to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government served to give the green light to the settler attacks, says Moayyad Bsharrat, head of the Union of Labor Committees Agricola, a Palestinian farmers’ advocacy organization.
The Israeli Army told AFP that it examines “all complaints about the behavior of soldiers who do not comply with orders.” But according to Joel Carmel, violent settlers and soldiers are convicted “rarely”: “the prosecutor’s office and most of the government apparatus are designed to protect them.”
rml (afp, @UNOCHA, efe)
