unpunished settler attacks against Palestinians and new construction in the West Bank

BEIRUT – You say “Jewish settlers” and you immediately reveal a universe of nationalist extremism and rising religious fanaticism. A variable gone crazy in the Middle Eastern crisis, fueled by fanatics who, in the name of the legitimacy deriving from the self-declared status of “universal victims” and the messianism of the “return to the land of the fathers”, motivates every type of violence and abuse against the Palestinian population. That’s half a million (in addition to 250,000 who live in the areas annexed by Israel in East Jerusalem) and among themselves the most radical do not exceed 100,000but their number is growing after the October 7 massacre, with a strong component of new immigrants, especially from the US diaspora.

Now not a day goes by without news arriving from the West Bank settler attacks against Palestinian villages with total impunitywhich include violence and threats to drive out the Bedouins, roads closed in a completely arbitrary way, methodical uprooting of olive groves and plantations, damage to water sources, burned homes and even wounding and killing of civilians with weapons of war.

Squads and infiltrators

After the killing of a 14-year-old Jewish boy last week in the West Bank, apparently by Islamic radicals, the teams of avengers immediately went into action, killing at least 7 Palestinians and wounding 75 others. According to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah , almost 500 civilians have been killed by soldiers and settlers in the last 6 months, thousands injured. The Current Israeli government foments settlers’ aspirations and, even in this period of war with the Biden administration calling for moderation, it continues to plan new settlements in the heart of those same regions that should be part of a hypothetical Palestinian state.

Radicals infiltrated the army

There is more. In recent years, more radical settler organizations have infiltrated the army’s top ranks and are now interfering in the chain of command. There are senior officersalso included in the battalions operating in Gaza, cwho seem to have little problem “covering up” for excessively violent soldiers. Indeed, they are often the ones who incite them. «For many of them the operation in Gaza became the dress rehearsal for emptying all the territories occupied in 1967 of their Arab population,” wrote the leading editorialists of the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Fears and hesitations

Administration USA is scared: it is pressuring Netanyahu to control them, but he knows well that he himself depends on them for his political survival. European diplomats don’t know what to do, divided between solidarity with the Jewish state after the massacre of 7 October and the need to block a movement that now boycotts any possibility of peace and threatens the roots of Israeli democracy. “The Americans fear that Netanyahu is ready to do anything to stay in office, the extremists’ blackmail weighs on him”, explain European diplomatic sources in Beirut.

The expelled communities

A recent report by Human Rights Watch accuses the settlers of having committed a sort of ethnic cleansing against “hundreds of Bedouins” driven from their lands in the Jordan Valley in autumn. «At least 7 communities were expelled after October 7», specific. The UN office for the defense of human rights calls for “the army to put an end to its activities of supporting the illegal actions of the settlers”. Words that denounce the ambiguous and dangerous relationship between the armed forces and the settler-soldiers, who often wear the uniform while carrying out abuses that contradict international conventions.

The issue is destined to become more serious. The
Guardian
denounces the Israeli choice to intensify the construction of thousands of homes for Jews in the occupied areas of East Jerusalem and right in the heart of neighborhoods densely populated by Palestinians such as Beit Safafa and Ras el Amud. The British newspaper quotes the Israeli humanitarian organization Bimkom, which reports that some of the projects had been in the air for some time, but were approved “only hours after the Hamas attack”. The underlying political plan remains that of the nationalist right to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Final approval of the building plans would take place on January 4.