‘If for a long time we talked about soldiers standing idly by as settlers commit acts of violence, now we are talking about soldiers standing together with the settlers, a move from passive to active involvement.’
Director of Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din
As the line between settlers and soldiers blurs, institutions that are meant to protect Palestinians are increasingly bolstering a system of impunity.
Impunity is not a new phenomenon for Palestinians living under military occupation. Research by Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din – who specialise in legal rights for Palestinians in the West Bank – found that when Palestinians report an incident of settler violence to the occupying Israeli authorities, only 3% of investigations result in a conviction. Since 2005, 93.7% of all investigations into settler violence against Palestinians were closed without charges.
These statistics do not include instances of unreported violence, which is more prevalent than reporting violence. At every step of the judicial process, Palestinians face challenges. The act of reporting a crime may spark reprisals and due process is highly unlikely.
Lawyers at Yesh Din reported that they ended up stepping in during some of the investigations they monitored. Staff coordinated collecting documents from witnesses to give to the police and filed appeals in cases that were needlessly closed.
Israeli military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank has severely escalated in recent months. The large-scale military raids in the north have led to the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967. Around 40,000 people are thought to have been displaced. In the Jordan Valley, the new political climate has heightened a trend of military and police being complicit or even perpetrators in violence against Palestinians. Communities in the Jordan Valley have reported that while a year ago, police would sometimes be a source of assistance, today, this is less likely to be the case.
One family was able to present their Tabu paper (proof of land ownership) to police last year, who subsequently removed settlers from their land. When facing similar issues recently, the family was told by police that the Tabu was ‘irrelevant.’
‘It happens nearly every night. Without warning, without a search warrant, without a court order. While you are sleeping peacefully, a Palestinian family is woken up abruptly.’
Violent military raids in Palestinian homes have also escalated. The Israeli government has justified these raids as a response to security concerns. Raids are framed as ‘searches’ where there is ‘reason to suspect’ an offence may be or planned to be, committed. However, the parameters for authorising are so expansive there is often no recognisable justification for a raid. Moreover, the process for authorising a raid has no judicial oversight. Multiple human rights organisations, including Breaking the Silence – an organisation made up entirely of veteran Israeli soldiers – conclude that the decision to carry out a military raid is more often than not arbitrary.
‘This is a violent and repressive tool that is central to Israel’s mechanism of control over Palestinians.’
A military raid is a traumatic experience. Raids take place in family homes with no warning and often with no reason given. A raid may happen at any time, day or night, and is often attended by dozens of soldiers.
One witness to a raid told us about 30 soldiers arriving at their house. Another reported around 20 soldiers. In another incident, a husband and wife were sleeping with their two- and four-year-old children in the next room. On being woken up by soldiers entering her room the sleepy child instinctively greeted them in Arabic, ‘Salam Alaikum.’
In many of the raids EAPPI documented, Palestinians suffered a disproportionate amount of force. In one instance, a man was beaten by soldiers wearing knuckle dusters while his children were in the same room. In another, a woman was repeatedly hit in the ribs after trying to prevent soldiers from separating her from her ten-year-old son, who was then handcuffed to a fence outside and away from his parents.
Palestinians tell us that soldiers often ransack their homes, search through personal belongings, and leave mess and breakages. Furniture is often damaged. We visited homes where cupboard doors had been ripped off their hinges. A witness to a raid said that their TV was ‘stamped on.’ Another witness showed us their slashed car tyres. In one incident, soldiers poured gravel into a car engine, resulting in the whole engine needing to be replaced.
There is also a pattern of soldiers looting money and valuables from the houses they are raiding. One family reported soldiers took 4,000 Jordanian dinars (about £4,200). From another home, soldiers took gold jewellery estimated to be worth 30,000-40,000 shekels (about £7,200).
‘Most of us think of our home as a place of safety… The knowledge that when our door is closed, no one can invade our private space without our permission enables the peace of mind and comfort we feel at home. Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank, however, are constantly vulnerable to arbitrary invasion of their homes by Israeli security forces and the severe, resulting harm.’
Our human rights monitors have documented increasing examples of the military joining in with, or directly instigating, settler violence towards Palestinians. In seven of the eight military raids we recorded in the Jordan Valley, witnesses to the raid told us that settlers were either present as soldiers or that the raid was a direct result of settlers contacting the army.
Witnesses said that those that they believed were ‘settler-soldiers’, either by an insignia or recognising their faces from previous harassment, were more violent than the other soldiers. In one raid, the settler-soldiers were responsible for destroying car windows before even entering the house. In another, they were responsible for beating a man while handcuffed. He suffered broken ribs as a result of the beating. This is corroborated by other reports that settler-soldiers are often more violent.
The line between settler and soldier has blurred increasingly in recent years. Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham (of +972 Magazine, No Other Land) reported that from 2021 to 2023, the Jordan Valley was host to an especially violent military brigade, the Desert Frontier Unit. Recruiting from known violent extremist settler groups, the unit was described as a ‘rehabilitation tool.’ It was stated that the settlers’ knowledge of the desert made them the only people for the job. The unit was eventually moved out of the Jordan Valley following an attack on Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, but dozens of other incidents of heavy-handed violence were also attributed to the unit.
The ongoing violent military campaign in Gaza has further increased the blurring lines between settler and soldier. Following 7th October 2023, the kittot konenut, a ‘civilian protection unit’ for settlements, received at least 700 military-grade weapons from the Israeli military. They have also taken to wearing Israeli military uniforms, making it difficult to distinguish between them and soldiers.
When I ask one person if they will report the beatings that took place during a raid and the money and valuables that were stolen, they reply, ‘To who? They are the same people.’
Furthermore, 5,500 settlers were explicitly drafted into hagmar, the ‘regional defence battalions’ that operate in the West Bank. Whereas some separation between settlers and soldiers may have once existed, today, the Israeli government has invited settlers and their methods into state institutions.
Take action!
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Please take some time to educate yourself and your loved ones about life under occupation in the occupied West Bank, a reality that is so often absent from mainstream media reporting. This powerful new film by Palestinian and Israeli activists Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham has won an Oscar: No Other Land.
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Subscribe to, support, and follow the joint Palestinian and Israeli media outlet, +972 Magazine, for human stories and reliable reporting from Palestine and Israel.
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Read more about the two-tier legal system that governs Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank by visiting our Law page.
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