West Bank settlers use military fatigue, sheep, bloody toys in new attacks

Right-wing Jews who live in illegal settlements that dot the occupied West Bank have started wearing army uniforms and brandishing military-grade rifles as they go around terrorising Palestinian villagers.

The latest wave of settler violence is aimed at occupying more Palestinian lands and it has blurred the line between extremist militias and the Israeli military, which is short of soldiers as most of them have been deployed for the Gaza war, activists say.

In October, Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced the purchase of 10,000 army rifles to arm illegal settler militias in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At the time, he said this was to protect the settlements.

Since then, Israeli settlers have killed at least nine Palestinians and torched nearly a hundred houses in Palestinian towns.

“Before October 7, most settler incursions would happen at night or after midnight. The settlers would cover their faces while vandalising our houses or cars, and when the police arrived, they would run away,” says Murad Abdel Moneim Ismail Samara, a resident of Bruqin, a Palestinian town near Nablus.

But now it seems, the settlers don’t fear any consequence, especially as they are getting complete protection from the Israeli army and police, he says.

“They know they are exempt from punishment. That’s why they have started attacking us in broad daylight.”

Over 700 settler attacks, half of them carried out in the presence of Israeli soldiers, were reported between October 7 and April 3, as per the latest United Nations figures.

These attacks have resulted in the displacement of around 1,222 Palestinians and the murder of at least 9. Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli security forces have killed 428 Palestinians.

The Israeli state has for years allowed Jewish people in illegal settlements to carry arms, which they use to harass and at times attack Palestinians. Each settlement would also have two or three settlers especially deputed to the task of security.

But the number of such security personnel has risen significantly in recent weeks and now they carry M16 rifles in military uniforms, says Samara.

“They have become like a mafia, and all the security settlers started to wear army clothes. We can no longer differentiate between the settlers and the army.”

Confiscating record land

With the world’s attention focused on Gaza where the Israeli military has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, the Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have been encroaching on more Palestinian land.

And they are even trying to erase the Palestinian connection to the villages and towns.

Aliya Malihat, a Palestinian who lives in Al Ma'rajat village, northwest of the city of Jericho says “With the war in Gaza, it is the best time for the settlers to confiscate more land and launch more attacks because they receive full support from the army.”

Aliya, a volunteer with the B’Tselem organisation for defending human rights, says she took to activism because no one else was telling the world about the suffering and injustice that people in her village were facing at the hands of the settlers.

With her camera, she had documented illegal settler incursions backed by the army in her village of Al Ma’rajat, a Bedouin village inhabited by 30 families. Their homes face a constant threat of demolition. The same is the situation in other neighbouring Bedouin villages.

When the sheep come

What makes her particularly anxious is when she sees a Jewish settler herding his sheep near her village, Al Ma’rajat. That’s a sign that setters are up to something sinister.

What has added to the anxiety of Aliya and her neighbours is the menacing presence of a prominent Jewish settler, Zohar Sabah, near their village. He has for months tried to seize Palestinian lands on which he wants to build a new Jewish settlement called Reut, named after his wife.

With the support of the Israeli army, Sabah had orchestrated raids on her village day and night, with settlers often beating women and children, arresting men, setting houses on fire, and stealing the livestock belonging to Palestinians.

“About five homes were abandoned because of this incident,” says Aliya, “now the settlers’ sheep roam where the families’ homes once stood.”

And the atrocities of the settlers don’t end here.

In recent weeks, settlers have placed Israeli flags on residents' homes and left blood-stained toys in the village school to intimidate the people.

Settlers have even dug up graves and decorated them with flowers in a macabre threat.

“This is what they want, to erase us, to bury us,” says Aliya. “Approximately 26 Palestinian Bedouin villages have been displaced since the beginning of the Gaza war because the settlers want to take revenge on us.”

Legal manipulation

The Israeli government has aided the settlers by using controversial regulatory pretexts that have been used to occupy the West Bank.

For instance, Palestinian villages are often designated as military zones, which makes it easier for settlers to grab Palestinian land, says Mick Bowman, an Irish anti-settler activist.

The settlers employ various techniques, such as claiming land within Area C as state lands or declaring lands as national parks or nature reserves.

The West Bank was divided into zones, A, B, and C in 1995 under the Oslo II Accord. Over 60 percent of the West Bank is designated as Area C, where the Israeli military retains full control, although it was originally intended to be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction. However, currently, 99 percent of the land in Area C is off-limits or heavily restricted for Palestinians.

When such confiscations occur, Palestinians have no recourse to effective judicial or legal process.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been subjected to military courts since 1967, and even when they do seek a legal route, the courts often rule in favour of the settlers as in Samara's case.

Samara says that his family owns 30 dunums (7.4 acres) of land near Al Dahr mountain. In mid-2014, a military court ordered the confiscation of 23 acres, claiming them as state property.

Even the remaining farmland was cordoned off by the Israeli military and Palestinian farmers are not allowed to work there. Gradually, the illegal Bruqin settlement was allowed to expand and settlers built their homes over the land.

“Their bulldozers are daily thickening the land and stealing more and more land,” says Samara.