Huwwara is a small town outside of Nablus that, largely due to its location on a prominent route in the occupied West Bank, has been subject to a significant Israeli settler and military presence, and often to substantial violence. Yet many were still surprised by the extent of the settler rampage on February 26, 2023 by groups of settlers who descended on the town, burning cars, businesses, and homes with families inside, all while Israeli soldiers guarded them and prevented ambulances from accessing the scene. At least one Palestinian died and more than 100 were injured, not only from being caught in the fires, but also from being stabbed, beaten, and attacked with tear gas.
Most media presented the attack, which was labeled a “pogrom” by Palestinians and many external observers—as well as by Israelis, including the commander of the Israeli military in the area—as a “price tag” response to the murder of two Israeli settlers by a Palestinian gunman earlier the same day. But this framing decontextualizes the escalating violence of the Israeli settler population, who rarely see any accountability for their actions, and are even protected by the Israeli military in many cases. After the attack on Huwwara, authorities detained only eight suspects, but eventually released them without charges. While the military claims that it will make more arrests, the history of Israel’s treatment of settler violence does not portend a just outcome in this case. And sure enough, rather than seeing justice, Huwwara was subjected to a second brazen pogrom on March 6, carried out by settlers just over a week after the earlier attack.
While the military claims that it will make more arrests, the history of Israel’s treatment of settler violence does not portend a just outcome in this case.
With a rapidly deteriorating situation in the West Bank, it is clear that the global policy of guaranteeing Israel impunity while ignoring Palestinian calls for justice and accountability has succeeded in emboldening the most extreme parts of Israeli society. This includes both the settler population and the new Israeli government, which itself includes many settlers and figures who openly call for greater territorial expansion and settlement. Indeed, as part of coalition talks, the new Israeli government has promised to prioritize efforts to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,” including the West Bank.
Many political figures have cited the exponentially expanding settlements in the West Bank as the largest obstacle to a political resolution in the region. Israel’s settlements and its displacement of Palestinians are violations of international humanitarian law. According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as an occupying power, Israel should “not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”; but this is exactly what it does by supporting settlements. And the multiple methods that Israel uses to seize Palestinian lands, including the declaration of state land, expropriation for public needs, requisition for military needs, and the abuse of absentee property laws, are illegal in and of themselves, and are doubly so when they are used as a pretext to demolish Palestinian property in order to expand Israel’s territory and sovereignty. But increasingly, it is not just the presence and expansion of Israeli settlements that are the largest threat to Palestinian lives and livelihoods, but the violence of the settlers themselves.
The Settlements and the Settlers
Prior to the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel’s development was largely focused within its 1948 borders, as defined by the 1949 armistice lines following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. But since 1967, every Israeli government has become increasingly more committed to territorial expansion throughout the occupied territories. This was first done through the Allon Plan of 1967, which called for Israel to retain control of land along the Jordan River and to establish settlements as an issue of “security.” From 1967 to 1977, an estimated 21 settlements rose in this region. Others were built in occupied areas like the Golan Heights, which Israel had seized from Syria in the 1967 War. Even then, violence and the demolition of homes was a significant feature of the settlement project, with 160 Palestinian houses demolished in the Old City of Jerusalem and another 600 expropriated, their owners removed and replaced by Jewish Israeli citizens.
After 1977, when the Likud Party took power, settlement development started to creep closer to Palestinian urban centers. Even governments involved in peace processes with the Palestinians justified settlement expansion as an issue of “natural growth.”
After 1977, when the Likud Party took power, settlement development started to creep closer to Palestinian urban centers. Even governments involved in peace processes with the Palestinians justified settlement expansion as an issue of “natural growth.” Between 1993, when the Oslo Accords that were allegedly meant to lead to a Palestinian state were signed, and the year 2000, when said proposed Palestinian state was supposed to have taken shape, the settler population increased by nearly 100 percent. The Oslo Accords, ironically, helped expedite settlement growth by divvying up the West Bank into three Areas (A, B, and C), one of which (Area C) makes up 60 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli security and civil control. Much of the current settler population is focused in this area, which, along with the new roads and infrastructure around settlements that have been allocated for exclusive Israeli use, has choked off the supposedly Palestinian-governed parts of the West Bank.
Today, official estimates put the population in the West Bank’s approximately 280 settlements and outposts at just around 500,000, with an additional 200,000 living in settlements in East Jerusalem. Israel approved about 22,000 additional units in 2021, and new projects are being announced on an almost monthly basis. The few settlements that had been built in the Gaza Strip after 1967, and that were home to about 9,000 settlers, were dismantled in 2005, and the settlers left the territory.
Almost immediately after Israel began its occupation in 1967, international actors recognized that the settlement expansion would be a barrier to what was already a volatile political situation. In 1971, the United Nations Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories argued that, “Every attempt on the part of the Government of Israel at carrying out a policy of annexation and settlement amounts to a denial of the fundamental human rights of the local inhabitants, in particular the right of self-determination and the right to retain their homeland, and a repudiation by the Government of Israel of accepted norms of international law.” Since then, multiple international bodies and global actors have repeatedly criticized the settlements, including previous American presidents and United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, most recently in Resolution 2334 from 2016, which explicitly condemns “the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”
The Rise of Settler Violence
While the logistic and legal problems posed by the settlements were immediately apparent, attention to the problem of settler violence came much more slowly. With the exception of several prominent events, like the 1994 massacre at the al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein that killed 29 Palestinians and injured 150 others, or the case of the settler who burned the home of the Dawabsheh family in the Palestinian village of Duma, killing the couple and their 18-month-old child and leaving another young child with significant injuries, most incidents of settler violence go ignored or unnoticed. Such violence includes throwing rocks; burning fields, homes, and cars; destroying trees; stealing or destroying crops; dumping sewage and other waste; and direct physical attacks that sometimes result in murder. Typically, if the Israeli military is present, they will remove the Palestinians from the encounter rather than confronting the settlers participating in the violence. Sometimes, military personnel will simply observe without intervening—and in some cases, the soldiers themselves participate as well. Settlers are very rarely detained, arrested, or investigated in such incidents, and Palestinians have no real mechanism to file complaints or pursue legal action.
Such violence includes throwing rocks; burning fields, homes, and cars; destroying trees; stealing or destroying crops; dumping sewage and other waste; and direct physical attacks that sometimes amount to murder.
Hebron, a large Palestinian city in the south of the West Bank, is in the unique situation of having settlements built in the city itself due to a bifurcation of authority in areas H1 (Palestinian) and H2 (Israeli), and is subject to a heavy Israeli military presence meant to protect the settlers living there. Hundreds of shops in the formerly bustling city center have closed in recent decades due to both attacks by settlers and military restrictions, including the presence of almost 20 checkpoints designed to control the movement of Palestinians. Settlers consistently loot and vandalize shops and homes; and attacks and raids by settlers are common occurrences. Famously, barbed wire and fences were installed above the market in the Old City to protect Palestinians from the stones and other items that settlers throw down on them from above. Indeed, Hebron is often called a “microcosm” of the Israeli occupation and even of Israel’s apartheid system, which has been drawing growing condemnation from prominent human rights groups and advocates. Yet the rise of settler violence in the town of Hebron was often ignored or obscured, rather than being seen as a warning sign of what was to come as the settlements expanded.
Although comprehensive figures are impossible to compile due to the fact that the vast majority of incidents go unreported, the United Nations estimates that after reaching a high in 2011, the incidence of settler violence decreased until around 2017, when it then began to creep up again. After multiple years of the US State Department essentially ignoring the issue under the Trump administration, the Biden administration began highlighting settler violence in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. In the most recent report, the administration acknowledges approximately 500 documented incidents of settler violence against Palestinians, approximately 12,300 trees cut down by settlers, and 330 Palestinian-owned vehicles vandalized. The report even acknowledges that despite some purported reforms, “Israeli security personnel often did not prevent settler attacks and rarely detained or charged perpetrators of settler violence.” However, while the Biden administration has acknowledged the issue rhetorically, it has essentially mirrored the Trump administration’s approach to Israel, wherein no action or outrageous statement from Israeli officials will cause a change in US policy, even in the face of increased violence from Israeli soldiers and settlers alike.
While the Biden administration has acknowledged the issue rhetorically, it has essentially mirrored the Trump administration’s approach to Israel, wherein no action or outrageous statement from Israeli officials will cause a change in US policy, even in the face of increased violence from Israeli soldiers and settlers alike.
Furthermore, what these reports and repudiations, however weak they may be, fail to consider is that the growth of the settlements and increasing settler violence are not a deviation from Israel’s broader settler colonial project, but are actually a central feature of it. As President of the Board of Al-Shabaka Tareq Baconi argued after the Huwwara attack, “Armed settlers are Zionism’s contemporary pioneers,” and are fulfilling a mission to “frighten Palestinians off their land and create outposts for taking over the territory.” History shows that land is never seized peacefully. Most civilians will not flee their homes until they feel immediately threatened and perceive that they have no other choice. Indeed, the events of Huwwara in recent weeks only echo what the events of the 1948 Nakba must have been like, a fact that is made clear by a 2021 statement made by Bezalel Smotrich, who is now Israeli minister of finance and in charge of the administration of the West Bank. Palestinians, he said, “are here by mistake—because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw [them] out in 1948.” It is no coincidence, then, that following the events of Huwwara, he told an audience that, “The village of Huwwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.” It should also not be seen as a coincidence that Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is currently serving as the Israeli minister of national security, was previously a member of a known terrorist organization and had a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the terrorist who perpetrated the Hebron mosque massacre, hanging in his home.
Although Smotrich was later forced to attempt to clarify his comments and Ben-Gvir was eventually pressured to take down the photo of Goldstein, their histories of violent incitement should not be overlooked; and neither should their rapid rise from fringe Knesset members to powerful government ministers. While their language is coarser than most of their compatriots, the history of Israeli policy toward settlers and settlements demonstrates that the Israeli government is more in line with their extreme views on expansion and displacement than foreign governments have wanted to acknowledge for many decades.
Violence and Settler Colonialism
Settler colonialism cannot exist without the presence of settlers. As many scholars in colonial studies have argued, settlers, unlike migrants, do not come to a country to assimilate with the indigenous people who are already living there; rather, they come to replace a population that is living on land that they see as rightfully theirs. This inherently entails devising some way of forcing said population to abandon the land. While prominent Israeli politicians have been more willing to publicly acknowledge their goals of territorial expansion and settlement in recent years, the totality of Israeli policy over the past 75 years leaves little doubt that Israel does not now, nor has it ever seen a sovereign Palestinian state as a realistic prospect.
In light of this fact, the violence of settlers should not be seen as an anomaly that merely requires stricter law enforcement, but rather must be understood as a tool of Israeli colonial violence that is all but openly encouraged by the state itself. As Israeli NGO B’Tselem argues, the Israeli state should not be seen as a potential solution to settler violence, but as an enabler, in large part due to its retroactive legalizations of land takeovers and its legitimization of physical violence against Palestinians. Only by fully acknowledging the central role that settler expansion and violence play in the Israeli state’s broader goals can the situation be resolved. Mere calls for “de-escalation” are insufficient and unjust.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Twitter
