Israeli opposition leaders on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of encouraging “extremists” and fostering a climate of chaos amid escalating attacks by illegal settlers against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank.
The criticism came after occupiers attacked the Palestinian villages of Jalud, Qaryut and Al-Mughayyir early on Tuesday, setting fire to homes and vehicles and assaulting an elderly woman, while Israeli forces also raided several areas in the occupied territory.
The army said in a statement that its forces and Border Police operated overnight in Jalud “to disperse Israeli rioters,” and sought to coordinate the return of a Palestinian family to its home in the village after the family had been forced to leave following what the army described as “nationalist crime against them.”
“Due to the violence, the mission to return the family to their home was not completed,” the army said.
According to the military, more than 100 illegal Israeli settlers were present in the village, blocking roads, setting tyres on fire and throwing stones at security forces.
It claimed troops used crowd-dispersal measures and arrested two occupiers who were transferred to police for questioning.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank say many attacks by illegal settlers take place under the protection of the Israeli army, which has also intensified raids, arrests, home demolitions and other operations since October 2023.
Terrorist attacks by illegal settlers include the killing of Palestinians, the demolition of homes and structures, the burning of mosques and vehicles, the bulldozing of agricultural land, the prevention of farmers from accessing their farms, the displacement of Palestinians, and illegal settlement expansion on their lands.
Terror campaign
Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, accused the Netanyahu government of “playing with fire.”
“Innocent civilians and IDF (army) soldiers will pay its horrific price,” Golan warned on the US social media platform X.
“The events of violence and pogroms in Judea and Samaria (occupied West Bank) do not occur in a vacuum. When a government creates an atmosphere of lawlessness and encourages extremists to set the area ablaze — it bears responsibility for the blood that will be shed,” he added.
According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Israeli settlers carried out 628 attacks across the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, in August.
Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot also condemned the settler attacks in Jalud.
“The grave acts that took place tonight in the village of Jalud are horrifying. I condemn them in the strongest terms,” Eisenkot said on X.
He described stone-throwing, arson and assaults by the settlers as part of a “campaign of terror and violence,” calling such acts “immoral, not Jewish, and it harms the security of all residents, as well as the work of the security forces.”
“This is what anarchy and loss of control look like, which have reached new heights under the current government,” he said.
"This reality, in which individuals take the law into their own hands, is the direct result of a dangerous policy that inflames the situation on the ground, harms the population, and puts security personnel at risk," Eisenkot added.
He urged Israeli authorities “to exhaust the full measure of justice against the rioters as soon as possible. It is absolutely forbidden for such events to recur.”
Settlement enterprise
Netanyahu, for his part, claimed that the violence was carried out by a “handful of rioters,” even though the army said more than 100 occupiers were involved in the Jalud attack alone.
“The handful of rioters are not representative of the law-abiding settler public in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), cause it immense injustice and hinder our forces from fulfilling their mission,” he claimed.
Since its formation in late 2022, Netanyahu’s far-right government has provided unprecedented support to illegal settlers, boasting of having approved the establishment of 104 new illegal settlements while setting up 160 agricultural settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that the illegal settler violence harms the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
He said arson, stone-throwing and attacks on army and Border Police personnel were “completely prohibited and cannot be justified.”
“The rioters harmed the holiday and the settlement project,” he said on X, referring to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
For his part, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar ignored the repercussions of settler attacks on Palestinians, focusing instead on security forces and the illegal settlement project.
“The riot that took place overnight in the Jalud rural area, which included the arson of property and the injury of Border Police fighters, is serious and abhorrent,” he wrote on X.
“Anyone who commits these criminal offenses and assaults Border Police fighters and IDF (army) soldiers, and even harms them, is a criminal who must be dealt with to the full severity of the law. They harm our values. They harm Jewish settlement. They harm Israel,” he added.
The statements came amid growing criticism of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
There is a near-consensus within Israel on encouraging illegal settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories, and most opposition criticism regarding settler violence focuses on the damage it causes to Israel's image.
Mutual criticism between opposition parties and the ruling coalition is intensifying as Israel approaches general elections scheduled for October 27.
Opinion polls show the opposition bloc leading Netanyahu’s camp, though without a majority sufficient to form a government.
Netanyahu is facing domestic corruption trials that could result in imprisonment upon conviction; additionally, he has been wanted since 2024 to appear before the International Criminal Court on charges of committing war crimes in Gaza.
In August, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee described Israeli settler involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “terrorists.”
In June, 14 UN special rapporteurs warned that the sharp rise in “settler terror” with state support and complicity in the occupied Palestinian territory posed an existential threat to Palestinian communities.
Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have intensified attacks across the West Bank, killing 1,206 Palestinians, injuring around 13,350 others, and detaining more than 24,600, according to Palestinian figures.
