When violence and oppression are a state policy, why would a state investigate it?
That’s the case with Israeli settler violence that has only been intensifying this year.
What has it looked like and what’s next?
We have to start by understanding that settler violence is nothing new in Palestine. In fact, it can be seen as yet another tool of intimidation, control, and land grabs that the Israeli government uses.
As B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation reports,
Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has misappropriated more than 2 million dunams of land there for its own purposes, including building and expanding settlements and paving roads for settlers.
Some areas have been officially taken over by the state, others through daily acts of settler violence.
These two seemingly unrelated tracks are both forms of state violence: the Israeli apartheid regime and its representatives actively aid and abet the settlers’ violence as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land.
Let’s not forget that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law: what exactly is illegal is for the occupying force to transfer its population to the territories it is occupying. So any analysis, any article, and any piece of news you might see about Israeli settlers is simply incomplete without this essential context.
On top of the illegality of their presence itself, what is just as concerning is how violent the settlers are getting, or, rather, what the scale of that violence has become.
This February, hundreds of settlers, protected by Israeli soldiers, attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara, torching cars, attacking buildings, injuring over. a hundred civilians, and killing one.
This past weekend, the towns of Turmus Ayya and Umm Safa were rampaged by settlers: they burned crops, attacked buildings, destroyed cars, and killed a 25-year-old Palestinian man.
But even when settler attacks don’t make the news (and they seldom do, at least in the mainstream media), I invite you to explore this database by B’Tselem. It lists cases of settler violence that you will notice are daily.
This rise of settler violence can be partly attributed to the new (even more than usual) far-right Israeli government that came to power at the end of 2022, promising a harder stance on Palestinians. Historically, that stance has always meant more violence, oppression, destruction, and, inevitably, deaths.
As I’ve written before,
As a government, you can’t embolden, protect, and grant impunity to people committing violent acts – while also inviting them to move to illegal Israeli settlements in the first place – and claim that what they do is not under your control.
It becomes clear that settler violence is state violence. And Israeli state violence is never new.
So what can we expect to see next in Palestine if nothing changes?
In short, more settler violence.
But for a longer answer, I invite you to listen to what Mariam Barghouti, a reporter and Senior Palestine Correspondent at Mondoweiss, has to say.
In this video, Mariam reminds us:
“The Israeli government arms and provides protection to Israeli settlers rampaging. They send in military forces with the settlers in civilian clothing, who are armed, as well, in order to facilitate ease of movement across Palestinian towns and villages.
What happened in Turmus Ayya was preceded in a similar occurrence just a few months ago, and it was preceded by a mass arson attack in Huwara near Nablus also a few months ago.
So this is not an anomaly. It’s not the exception. It’s the norm.”
And it will stay the norm if we don’t speak out against it, if we don’t pressure our governments to stop supporting Israel, and if we don’t deconstruct the very Israeli state narrative that shows settlers as petty criminals at best, instead of revealing their actual role in maintaining Israel’s system of oppression.
Settler violence is state violence.
Justina
Please find my most recent episode on Palestine below and see all my work on Palestine here.
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