ISLAMABAD: The Israeli settler violence has surged since the ceasefire in Gaza, killing three people — 14-year-old Aws Hamdi al-Naasan and 32-year-old Jihad Marzouq Abu Naim, and 25-year-old Awda Atef Awawdeh — in the past week.
The Palestinian health ministry said Awawdeh was killed by settler gunfire in the central West Bank. Similarly, Naasan and Naim also became victims of settler gunfire in the central West Bank
The Agence France-Presse (AFP) tally says that since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, troops or settlers have killed at least 1,065 Palestinians in the West Bank, which has been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
According to data collected by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 5,600 Palestinians were killed, and over 115,000 were injured across Gaza and the West Bank combined between 2008 and 2020 — figures that do not yet include the mass casualties of the post-October 2023 war in Gaza, which OCHA is still independently verifying.
What is a settler?
A settler, in the context of Israel, is a citizen of Israel who relocates to a community built in territory outside the country's internationally recognised borders. The Israeli settlements are the communities built by the Israelis in the territories occupied by their country in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israeli settler communities have existed almost exclusively in the West Bank, with some in the Golan Heights. Around 700,000 Israelis currently reside in the West Bank.
According to the Israel Policy Forum, “Settlements are Israeli civilian communities […] in territories acquired by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War that are not under Israeli sovereignty.”
The United Nations Security Council has said that it would not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the two sides through negotiations.
Scholar Patrick Wolfe describes settler colonies “as a system rather than a historical event that perpetuates the erasure and destruction of native people as a precondition for settler colonialism and expropriation of lands and resources.”
Algeria, which gained its independence from France in 1962, was a French settler colony between 1830 and 1962, during which it was considered a “French Department.” This administrative designation of the department allowed French settlers full civic standing as compared to the indigenous Algerian population, who were under a separate, inferior legal order.
Most settler societies tend to operate under apartheid, a defining feature where separate groups live under entirely different legal systems. The Population Registration Act, 1950, in South Africa required all civilians to be classified as either native (people of African descent), Colored (those of mixed race), or white. According to the classification, it was determined where someone could live, work, attend school, or socialize.
Similarly, Israeli civilians who commit violence in the West Bank are subject to Israeli law and are tried in courts inside Israel, whereas Palestinians are tried under military law. In March, Israel passed a law in the parliament known as the death penalty bill. The death penalty bill only applies to the military courts, in which only Palestinians are tried. According to B'Tselem, the conviction rate for these courts is approximately 96%, based largely on confessions extracted under duress during interrogations.
What is settler violence?
According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, Israel “misappropriated” more than 200,000 hectares of land in the West Bank, which it uses for multiple purposes, including building new settlements.
The rights group said that settler violence against Palestinians serves as a major informal tool in the hands of the state to take over more and more West Bank land.
The Israeli settlers initiate violence against Palestinians or their land to further their agenda of occupying the territory, B’Tselem said.
A 19-year-old Palestinian-American was killed during an Israeli settler raid in February. In May of last year, Israeli settlers “hunted” Palestinians across the West Bank valley, armed with pistols, rifles, and batons. Consequently, nine Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, were hospitalized. Last month, settlers torched homes and vehicles in two separate areas of the West Bank. A similar incident was also documented in late February when a mosque was set ablaze near Nablus.
The Israeli government “fully supports and assists these acts of violence,” with its agents participating in them directly, the Israeli human rights group said.
The Israeli government has ordered the military to defend the outposts — land violently taken from Palestinians — set up by settlers. It even paved roads and laid down water and electricity infrastructure for the illegal settlements.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding reported that since 2017, incidents of settler attacks against Palestinians rose each year. During the first six months of 2023, before October 7, the UN humanitarian agency reported 591 settler-related incidents in the territory.
The UNSC has demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
The Security Council also called for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror; however, the incidents of violence by Israeli settlers have only increased.
The violence against Palestinians is not limited to individual harm; it is often viewed as part of a broader, systematic process linked to control and occupation of land.
In December last year, Israel’s security cabinet signed off on plans to formalize 19 illegal settlements across the West Bank, deepening a decades-long project of stealing the Palestinian land and changing the demographic.
Did not start on October 7
Settler violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank has been ongoing since Israel occupied it in 1967.
According to OCHA data, more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed during Israel's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014 — nearly a decade before Hamas' attack of October 7.
The incidents of violence act as a displacement strategy used by Israeli settlers to terrorize the Palestinians into giving up their land. Normalization of violence against Palestinians has empowered the Israeli civilians to believe that they can, or rather actually, commit heinous crimes against Palestinians.
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