Settler violence is state violence in the West Bank

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Settler violence is state violence in the West Bank
Palestinians inspect a burned house after it was set ablaze by a group of Jewish settlers in the village of Tel, west of the West Bank city of Nablus, on 18 July. (Mohammed Nasser APA images)

By Tamara Nassar, reposted from The Electronic Intifada, July 30, 2026

Jewish settler violence in the occupied West Bank tipped over the edge in a bloody incident last week, leaving four Palestinians and two Israelis killed. But the trend obscures a broader objective which is being pursued actively: Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.

The deadly incident in the Palestinian village of Tel made international headlines, perhaps because it involved the deaths of two Israelis, and is now being used as a pretext to launch a major Israeli military operation targeting Palestinians in the West Bank.

Video footage of the incident analyzed by researchers, together with eyewitness testimonies, contradicts the Israeli military’s narrative that Palestinians had attacked a group of Israelis who had been hiking in the area.

In the early hours of 24 July, between 40 and 50 Jewish settlers, including children, infiltrated the Palestinian village of Tel, near Nablus, from the east and attacked four or five homes with stones while attempting to break into them, Human Rights Watch reported, citing eyewitness accounts that their researchers cross-verified with video footage.

An armed settler then shot and wounded a Palestinian resident, according to Human Rights Watch. Villagers gathered to support the family of the wounded, and the settlers withdrew.

Half an hour later, the same group of settlers returned, this time entering the village from the southwestern area accompanied by Israeli occupation forces.

The settlers came from Havat Gilad, a West Bank settlement outpost not formally authorized by the Israeli government, according to Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, which based its findings on eyewitness accounts and testimonies gathered by field researchers.

A local resident who witnessed both incidents, Mujahid Waleed, said there had already been fighting between Palestinian residents and settlers by the time he arrived at the scene of the second incident.

“The settlers were attacking the Palestinians, and the army stood by and didn’t intervene,” he told Human Rights Watch.

“The army only intervened once a Palestinian man disarmed a settler and started shooting at the soldier and settlers. The army fired back and killed point-blank the [Palestinian] carrying the weapon, and settlers and soldiers shot the other three unarmed Palestinians.”

Footage from the incident showed a Palestinian villager, who was later named as Farouk Ramadan, confronting an Israeli settler who was charging at him with an assault rifle, and the villager seizing the rifle from the settler and disarming him.

An exchange of gunfire resulted in the death of two Israeli soldiers, named Benyahu Mellet, 32, who was acting as a settler “guard” in the area of Tel, and Yuval Ezra, 27, an active duty soldier. The Israeli military said both died “during operational activity.”

The source of the gunfire that killed the two Israelis remains unverified, according to Al-Haq, though an assessment by the Israeli military suggested Ezra may have been killed by “friendly fire.”

Four Palestinians, all from the Ramadan family, were killed by Israeli fire, and others were injured with live ammunition.

The Israeli military said it was responding to “an attack on Israeli civilians who were hiking in the area” and that “terrorists stole the weapon of a security personnel who had arrived at the scene and opened fire toward the Israeli civilians.”

This narrative is undermined by the video footage.

An analysis of the footage by +972 Magazine in partnership with the Hebrew website Local Call concluded that Farouk Ramadan “was shot while unarmed, after walking slowly toward the soldiers and then dropping to the ground several meters in front of them – possibly by an Israeli settler.”

Additionally, the claim that Israeli settlers are harmlessly “hiking” in the occupied West Bank is “a cover narrative frequently used in Israeli media to obscure crimes committed by settler militias,” according to Al-Haq.

It also ignores the fact that they are often armed, as they were in this case.

Despite the Israeli military’s portrayal of Palestinians as the initiators of the violence, this was not the first time settlers have harassed residents of the area. Earlier this month, Israeli settlers reportedly set fire to a Palestinian home in Tel, causing extensive damage to the building according to the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

“The [Palestinian] Civil Defense added that the fire crews, upon their arrival, found the house completely burned,” the news agency added.

Later on 24 July, an undercover Israeli special forces unit then raided a hospital in Nablus where the wounded were receiving medical treatment and arrested two patients. Later that night, the Israeli army raided the village of Tel and arrested dozens of residents.

Israeli forces also surveyed the home of Farouk Ramadan to prepare it for punitive demolition.

A slew of revenge attacks by Israeli settlers erupted in various places in the West Bank following the Tel incident.

Israeli settlers also set fire to two mosques early on Sunday in two separate attacks in Qusra, south of Nablus, and in the village of Kour, south of Tulkarm. Settlers vandalized or attacked at least 45 mosques in the West Bank throughout last year.

“Unrestrained Jewish aggression and terror”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered a “response” to the Tel incident.

It included revoking work permits and increasing army units throughout the West Bank. Netanyahu and Katz also called for “accelerating the legalization of farm outposts and establishment of new ones.”

The Israeli military stated that it was preparing to launch a “major” military operation across the West Bank in response as well, despite the thorough dismantlement of resistance infrastructure in the northern West Bank since 7 October 2023, and the mass forcible displacement of Palestinians from refugee camps in those areas.

“There is currently no significant terror infrastructure in the West Bank, and most power centers have already been dismantled,” an analysis piece in the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz read.

“Much of the operation, then, is expected to target the civilian population in villages and farming communities – where residents already contend with unrestrained Jewish aggression and terror.”

This is a clear case of “collective punishment” on Palestinians in the West Bank, the Palestinian BDS National Committee – which coordinates the boycott against Israel and corporations aiding its crimes – stated. Israel’s military is “enabling programs” by Jewish settlers, the BDS National Committee added.

But Israel’s ultra-right-wing ministers don’t believe the military is going far enough.

“The soldiers there – I love them – but we need a policy that in situations like these, you shoot, you shoot, you shoot. They throw rocks at you? Shoot. They throw Molotov cocktails? Shoot,” Israel’s interior minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in an interview following the Tel incident, explicitly calling for the killing of Palestinians even in situations where they’re not posing a deadly threat.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for forcible displacement, saying that the villages of Tel, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik “need to look exactly like the refugee camps in Nablus and Tulkarm.”

“Settlers in uniform”

The Israeli military spokesperson said last week that there’s been a “significant and unequivocal decrease” in settler violence against Palestinians.

This contradicts data by Israel’s own domestic spying and torture agency, the Shin Bet. The agency found that “nationalist crimes by Jews in the West Bank surged by 50 percent in the first half of 2026” in comparison to the same time last year, Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported this week.

Such crimes include blocking roads, damaging property, stone-throwing, setting fire to buildings and vehicles, and attacks on agriculture.

In the first half of this year, 660 “nationalist crimes” were reported, compared to 440 during the same period last year, according to that set of data. There has also been a rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded in such incidents.

More than 100 such crimes have been committed since the beginning of this month. Haaretz also said there has been an increase in incidents where settlers attacked Israeli forces in the first half of this year.

A general view shows a newly established Israeli settler outpost near the Palestinian village of Salem, east of the West Bank city of Nablus on 27 July. Mohammed Nasser APA images
A general view shows a newly established Israeli settler outpost near the Palestinian village of Salem, east of the West Bank city of Nablus on 27 July. Mohammed Nasser APA images

Israeli settlers in the West Bank are the foot soldiers of Israel’s colonial ambitions.

It is through their willingness to establish “facts on the ground” that paves the way for settlement recognition by the Israeli government.

Not only are their settler-colonial ambitions streamlined and encouraged by the Israeli government, but individual settlers who harass, assault, kill and steal from Palestinians and their property are emboldened by a system of impunity that shields them from accountability.

“Settlers responsible for attacks often operate with the financial, material and legal backing of the Israeli state,” Human Rights Watch said.

Particularly since 7 October 2023, “Israel has equipped thousands of settlers with military firearms and uniforms and given them lethal powers without adequate oversight mechanisms,” a report by Yesh Din – an Israeli group that monitors settler activity in the West Bank – said in December.

“Shootings, violent assaults, trespassing, theft and property damage are only some examples of the types of offenses Israeli civilians have committed against Palestinians behind the shield of military-issued firearms and uniforms over the past two years,” the group added.

“The perpetrators were settler-soldiers on military duty who were abusing their authority, settler-soldiers on leave acting outside any official mission, or settlers in uniform acting on their own initiative.”

Settler violence, however, is not a series of isolated incidents.

They are “a direct result of Israel’s aggressive campaign of settlement across the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the wider imposition of its settler colonial apartheid regime,” Al-Haq said earlier this year.

Israeli settlers living in the West Bank do so illegally under international law. All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights are illegal under international law and are considered a war crime.

“Settler violence is state violence because it’s militarized – armed, funded and backed – by Israeli authorities,” the UN human rights office said.

“Palestinians are attacked by ‘settlers in uniform’: individuals in partial or full military gear, wielding state-issued weapons, supported by state forces, making it impossible to tell settler from soldier.”

Outposts

The Israeli government’s call to “legalize” additional outposts in response to the deadly incident last week is part of an accelerating policy of formalizing outposts across the West Bank since the current government took office in December 2022.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in April about Israel’s “largest-ever colonial expansion” unfolding in the West Bank as the current government approved a slew of settlements and outposts, including in areas that also fall under the nominal governance of the Palestinian Authority.

What Israel refers to as “outposts” are often built without Israel’s official permission and are considered illegal even under Israeli law – at least initially.

These outposts often start with a small group of more extreme settlers gathering in an area with structures and caravans. Over time, the Israeli government begins extending basic infrastructure, such as water and electricity, effectively paving the way for the outposts’ recognition as official settlements.

This process has been accelerated and streamlined since Bezalel Smotrich became a key government minister for administering the military occupation.

Since the current Israeli government – which includes Smotrich – took office in December 2022, more than 230 outposts and farms have been established across the West Bank, according to Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now.

These outposts and farms comprise almost 20 percent of the West Bank. More than 120 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced to make way for the outposts.

For the first time since the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel signed the Oslo accords in the 1990s, outposts were established in Area B of the West Bank. Area B refers to the zone in which the Palestinian Authority is officially in charge of such matters as building and planning, theoretically sharing responsibility for “security” with the Israeli military occupation.

Over the past 2.5 years, 21 such outposts have been built in Area B.

Despite the Israeli government claiming outposts in Area B are dismantled, “in practice they continue to multiply, become more firmly established and expand. Some are already home to families, others now include synagogues, and in at least one case a coffee cart has been installed to serve the many visitors arriving at the site,” settlement watchdog Peace Now said.

“The new generation of outposts is fundamentally different,” the group added, saying they “dominate extensive areas” and they prevent Palestinians from accessing farmland.

“Along with the IDF [Israeli military], these outposts are the leading edge of Israel’s project of ethnic cleansing,” the organization Breaking the Silence said.

De facto annexation

All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of unprecedented advancement of de facto annexation in the West Bank under the current Israeli government.

“Settler violence is a core component of Israel’s annexationist plans,” Al-Haq stated in March as it was raising the alarm about settler violence and “terror” being perpetrated against Palestinians and their communities across the West Bank.

“The current government has transformed Israel’s control mechanisms in the West Bank,” a recent report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot concludes. The report documents measures taken by the Israeli government between 2023 and 2025 that form “a single, systematic government policy aiming to deepen Israeli control over the West Bank and advance de facto annexation.”

The report, which focuses on other aspects of entrenching control, considers violence by Israeli settlers to be “part of a funded and institutionalized system whose purpose is to expel Palestinians and take over their land.”

Many who position themselves to the left of Netanyahu’s coalition may fear that the surge in settler violence will further damage Israel’s international image.

The real concern, however, is the complete collapse of the facade of a two-state solution – a framework that has been null and void since its day of arrival though various liberal governments continue to treat it as viable while they support, fund and defend Israel.

Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada. 

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