How Israeli settlers are able to seize Palestinian land with impunity in the West Bank

Analysis How Israeli settlers are able to seize Palestinian land with impunity in the West Bank
This picture taken from Nablus on March 23, 2025 shows southeast of the city the new expansion of the Israeli settlement outpost of Itamar, on the hill overlooking the village of Beit Furik in the occupied West Bank. (AFP)
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Updated 15 April 2025
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How Israeli settlers are able to seize Palestinian land with impunity in the West Bank

How Israeli settlers are able to seize Palestinian land with impunity in the West Bank
  • Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers are increasingly acting together, blurring the lines between military force and mob violence
  • Palestinians face growing displacement, home demolitions, and intimidation under punitive laws and unchecked settler expansion

LONDON: Attacks on Palestinian villagers in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, and the seizure or demolition of their properties under lopsided laws, are nothing new. But, ever since the start of the war in Gaza, the number and nature of such incidents has intensified.

Several attacks over the past few weeks have added to the impression that not only have settlers been given carte blanche to do as they please, but also that discipline within the ranks of the Israeli army operating in the West Bank is breaking down.

Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 917 Palestinians, including militants, in the West Bank.

On March 27, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, revealed that in the first three months of this year alone, 99 Palestinians had been killed during operations by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

Tens of thousands had been displaced from their homes, 10 UN-run schools had been forced to close, and 431 homes lacking impossible-to-acquire Israeli-issued building permits had been demolished — twice as many as over the same period last year.




An Israeli army soldier walks with a blindfolded man being detained, towards an armoured vehicle during a military operation in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

Occasionally, such attacks are caught on camera. That was the case at the beginning of this month, when footage circulated purportedly showing masked settlers attacking the village of Duma in the northern West Bank, setting fire to homes.

On Feb. 29, dozens of settlers, accompanied by Israel Defense Forces personnel, descended on Jinba, a shepherding community, where, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “uniformed and civilian-dressed Israelis raided the village, broke into all the homes, dumped food, vandalized appliances and terrorized the locals.”

The supposed trigger for the attack on the village, after which dozens of Palestinian men were rounded up and arrested, was an alleged assault on a settler shepherd. In fact, phone footage later emerged appearing to show the man in question approaching Palestinians and their flock on an all-terrain vehicle and physically assaulting one of them.

“Land seizures and violence by settlers is not new, but there has been a huge increase,” Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, an architect and adviser to the Israeli nongovernmental organization Planners for Planning Rights, or Bimkom, told Arab News.

“What has changed is that there is now widespread collaboration between the settlers, the army, the authorities, and the police. Now, the army is the settler.”




Charred cars sit at the entrance of the occupied West Bank village of Duma, in the aftermath of an Israeli settler attack, on April 17, 2024. (AFP)

Often those involved in violence and intimidation are from IDF reserve units, whose members are settlers and are deployed near their own settlements, and “sometimes they are wearing uniforms, sometimes not.”

Rarely is anyone arrested. “The police put obstacles in the way of Palestinians who come to submit complaints,” said Cohen-Lifshitz.

“The army, the police, and the settlers have become a single unit, working together against the poorest, most fragile and marginalized communities that don’t do any harm. These people are not involved in anything, but they live in fear of the settlers.” 

Their “crime” is that “they are living on land which Israel and the settlers want to control and ethnically cleanse,” he added.

Planning law is also being deployed against Palestinians in the West Bank. “Israel is using it like a weapon to conquer land,” said Cohen-Lifshitz.




According to Cohen-Lifshitz, “The army, the police, and the settlers have become a single unit, working together against the poorest, most fragile and marginalized communities that don’t do any harm.” (AFP)

It was planning law, he said, that led to the creation of settlements and the fragmentation of the West Bank, and “there are plans for the Palestinians, too, but the aim of these is to limit the development, to create very small areas in which building is allowed, but at a very high density, which is not how it used to be in Palestinian villages.

“There, it was about 10 units per hectare. Now the plans for Palestinian areas propose urban densities of 100 units, allowing the authorities to justify demolitions outside these areas.”

Over the past two years, however, “there has been a huge expansion in settlement outposts and farms. But, as far as we know, not a single permit for Palestinian building has been approved.”

Apparent indiscipline in the IDF ranks has not escaped the notice of the military top brass, who appear keen to ascribe poor conduct to reserve soldiers rather than core personnel.




Israeli excavators carry out the demolition of Palestinian buildings constructed without a permit in the village of Al-Samua, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

Although he did not comment on the violence in Duma, Israel’s top commander in the occupied West Bank, Major General Avi Bluth, condemned the actions of reservists during a raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem on April 2.

Images shared on social media showed vandalized apartments, where furniture was broken and Israeli nationalist slogans spray painted on walls. In a video shared by the army last week, Bluth said that “the conduct in Dheisheh by our reserve soldiers is not what we stand for.”

“Vandalism and graffiti during an operational mission are, from our perspective, unacceptable incidents. It is inconceivable that IDF soldiers do not act according to their commanders’ orders,” he added.




A Palestinian man walks past graffiti reading in Hebrew: “Revenge (R), Fight the enemy, not the ally (L)”, in a building after an attack by Israeli settlers, near the West Bank city of Salfit on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the escalation in violence in the West Bank as the result of a collapse of discipline, said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon war.

“This is not about discipline. This is something else — the execution of a plan,” he said. “The war in Gaza is all but over. The main front now is the West Bank, where I think the Israelis are trying to implement a big plan to empty it of its people and annex it.”

The IDF, in Bregman’s view, has changed.

“Many IDF units, especially infantry, are now dominated by right-wing settlers. They have managed to penetrate these units to such an extent that I think it is not an exaggeration to say that many units, especially infantry, which is relevant because they are on the ground, are led by settlers.”

The driving force, he believes, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a defense minister and is responsible for the administration of the West Bank.




Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, who served in the Israeli army for six years said that many IDF units, especially infantry, are now dominated by right-wing settlers. (AFP)

Leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Smotrich is himself a settler, who, in the words of a profile in The Times of Israel, “has long been a vociferous supporter of West Bank settlements and just as strongly opposes Palestinian statehood, subscribing to the view that Jews have a right to the whole land of Israel.”

The support of Israeli ministers for the settlers goes beyond mere words. Last year, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave more than 120,000 firearms to settlers. More recently, Smotrich and Orit Strock, the settlements and national missions minister, gifted 21 ATVs to illegal farms and outposts in the South Hebron hills, to be used “for security purposes.”

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a US-registered non-profit that collects data on conflict and protest around the world, says its findings support the anecdotal evidence that violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is escalating.

“It is not always clear who is responsible,” Ameneh Mehvar, ACLED’s senior Middle East analyst, told Arab News.

“Is it always settlers, or soldiers, security squads, regional defense battalions? There is a blurring of lines. But we have definitely seen problematic behavior by soldiers in the past few weeks.”




Palestinians inspect the damage at a shop on January 21, 2025, after it was burnt in overnight Israeli settler attacks in Jinsafot village east of Qalqiliya in the occupied West Bank. (AFP)

Traditionally, she said, “the IDF’s rules of engagement in the West Bank were different. The policy of the Central Command was to limit violence and maintain the status quo — for practical reasons, as much as anything else, because settlers and Palestinians live side by side.

“But since Oct. 7, things have become much worse. There is a spirit of revenge and the soldiers feel they have the support of the rhetoric of far-right, pro-settler politicians. It isn’t necessarily that senior commanders are ordering more violence, but that junior commanders on the ground are allowing it.

“So what we’re seeing is a mix of this permissible environment, and the redeployment to the West Bank of soldiers from Gaza, coming back from the war there with the mindset that Palestinians are not humans. They use the same rules of engagement — that everyone is dangerous, anything is allowed, shoot first, and ask questions later.”

The pro-settlement parties in Israel, she said, “are no longer fringe actors, but are part of the mainstream in Israeli politics, and their aim is obviously annexation of parts of the West Bank.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s biggest interest is staying in power, and in order to keep his coalition together he has been giving a lot of incentives to the pro-settlement parties and politicians.”




Israeli soldiers fire teargas at Palestinian farmers as they leave their land after they were attacked by Israeli settlers as they farmed in Salem village east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on November 28, 2024. (AFP)

The IDF’s ongoing so-called “Iron Ball” operation in the northern West Bank is taking place against this background. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, the assault on Jenin Camp, which began two months ago, is “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the Second Intifada in the 2000s.”

The UN says that tens of thousands of residents from Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Far’a refugee camps have been displaced, as the IDF has embarked on “systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and homes, aiming to permanently change the character of Palestinian cities and refugee camps at a scale unjustifiable by any purported military or law enforcement aims.”

Although the world’s attention has been focused on Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon, “what is happening in the West Bank is not a sideshow,” said Mehvar.

“Before Oct. 7, settler attacks were already on the rise. But now the West Bank is a powder keg that could explode at any time.”

 

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‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town
Updated 13 May 2025
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‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.


Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital
Updated 13 May 2025
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Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital
  • Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries
  • Residents urged to stay indoors

TRIPOLI: Violent clashes between rival armed groups erupted Monday night in the Libyan capital Tripoli, prompting the interior ministry to urge residents to stay indoors.
Heavy arms fire and explosions were heard in several areas of the capital from 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), AFP journalists in the city said.
Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries.
The interior ministry of the national unity government in Tripoli in a statement urged “all citizens to stay at home for their safety.”
Local media said clashes broke out in the southern suburbs between armed groups from Tripoli and rivals from Misrata, a major port city 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital.
Libya is struggling to recover from years of unrest following a 2011 revolt that led to the fall of the late dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
It is currently divided between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.
Despite relative calm in recent years, clashes periodically break out between armed groups vying for territory.
In August 2023, fighting between two powerful armed groups in Tripoli left 55 dead.
Several districts of the capital and its suburbs announced that schools would be closed on Tuesday until further notice.
Earlier Monday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the United States Embassy in Tripoli called for calm.
They urged “all parties to de-escalate” and “refrain from any provocation, to resolve disputes through dialogue.”


Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says
Updated 12 May 2025
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Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

RAMALLAH: An Israeli rights group has denounced a government decision to launch extensive land registration for parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it could help advance annexation of the Palestinian territory.

“It is a tool for annexation,” said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Settlement Watch project at Israeli nongovernmental organization Peace Now.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has no comprehensive land registry, with some areas unregistered or residents holding deeds from before the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday decided to initiate a land registration process in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Though the process would likely take “years” according to Mizrachi, he said that Palestinians in Area C could lose land if Israeli authorities do not accept their claim to it.

This might lead to “a massive land theft,” Peace Now said, adding that the process could result “in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the (Israeli) state.”

“The Palestinians will have no practical way to realize their ownership rights,” the anti-settlement group said.

Some Israeli ministers have advocated the annexation of the West Bank, home to around 3 million Palestinians as well as some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, has said that 2025 would be the year Israel extends its sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.

To Mizrachi, the government’s decision was primarily “about ... the places where they want to expand settlements,” including in areas considered state land.

He mentioned remarks by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who praised the move in the official statement announcing it.

Katz said that launching land registration “is a revolutionary decision that brings justice to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name that the Israeli government uses to refer to the West Bank.

The process will lead to the “strengthening, establishment and expansion” of settlements, Katz was quoted as saying.

He also said it would block “attempts to seize land” by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank but not Area C.

Mohammed Abu Al-Rob, director of the Palestinian Authority’s communication center, said that the decision was “a dangerous escalation of Israel’s illegal policies aimed at entrenching its occupation and advancing de facto annexation.”

Area C is “an inseparable part” of the rest of the Palestinian territories, he said.

Abu Al-Rob called on the international community to “reject this unlawful decision and to take immediate, concrete action to thwart its implementation.”


Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state
Updated 12 May 2025
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Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state
  • Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani emphasizes that ‘our goal is not dominance but unification’

ANKARA: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani has warned that postponing the implementation of an agreement between Syria’s new administration and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast would “prolong the chaos” in the country.

His remarks came as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced it was disbanding, an announcement the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control swaths of north and northeast Syria, have not yet commented on.

The PKK’s move is “a pivotal moment” for regional stability, Al-Shaibani told a news conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Jordanian counterparts.

Syria is “implementing the national accord with the Syrian Democratic Forces and incorporating all areas under central state control,” he said.

In March, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the civil and military institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.

The deal, agreed three months after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.

“This process is complicated and sensitive, but it is necessary,” Al-Shaibani said, adding that “delaying the implementation of this agreement will prolong the chaos, open the door to foreign interference, and fuel separatist tendencies.”

“Our goal is not dominance but unification,” he said.

“We are keen on implementing this agreement, and we hope that the other side is seriously committed to implementing this agreement,” he added.

The SDF, the Kurdish administration’s de facto army, controls most of the oil and gas fields in Syria. The force maintains that it is independent from the PKK, but it is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara views as a PKK offshoot.

After years of marginalization and repression under the Assad dynasty, the Kurds took advantage of the government forces’ withdrawal during the civil war, which erupted in 2011, to establish a semi-autonomous administration.

With US backing, the SDF played a key role in the fight against Daesh, which was defeated in its last Syrian territorial stronghold in 2019.

Al-Shaibani emphasized that “the unity of Syrian territory is non-negotiable, as Syria is an indivisible, unified state, sovereign over its land and will remain so.”

“The rights of Kurdish citizens will be preserved and guaranteed on an equal footing with the rest of the Syrian people,” he added.

Syria’s Kurds have criticized a temporary constitutional declaration announced in March and said the new government failed to reflect the country’s diversity.

In February, Abdi said an initial call for the PKK to lay down weapons and disband did not concern his forces.


Jordanian and Saudi army chiefs reaffirm military partnership

Jordanian and Saudi army chiefs reaffirm military partnership
Updated 12 May 2025
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Jordanian and Saudi army chiefs reaffirm military partnership

Jordanian and Saudi army chiefs reaffirm military partnership
  • Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of efforts to enhance regional security, says Jordanian commander
  • His counterpart from the Kingdom reaffirms Riyadh’s commitment to tackling regional threats

LONDON: During talks on Monday, Maj. Gen. Yousef Ahmed Al-Hunaiti, chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces, and his Saudi counterpart, Gen. Fayyadh Al-Ruwaili, discussed military cooperation between their countries.

They considered ways in which cooperation might be enhanced and expertise shared, and addressed the development of strategic defense partnerships and coordinated efforts to tackle regional and international security challenges.

Al-Hunaiti reaffirmed the strong ties between the nations’ armed forces, and said that Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of efforts to enhance regional security, the Jordan News Agency reported.

Al-Ruwaili praised collaborative efforts to strengthen defense and security initiatives, and reaffirmed Riyadh’s commitment to tackling regional threats.

They were joined during their meeting at the Saudi Armed Forces headquarters in Riyadh by several senior officers from both countries.