The violent scenes playing out in the West Bank over the past few days are painfully familiar. Settlers setting fire to homes and places of worship, Palestinian villages coming under vicious attacks, families forced to leave their homes at gunpoint with nothing but what they can carry, and the Israeli army carrying out lethal raids.
This latest episode of violence is framed as a consequence of a deadly confrontation in the village of Tal in the northern West Bank, where Israeli settlers who attacked the community were confronted by Palestinian men. Two settlers died.
In its aftermath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase military operations in the West Bank to target “terrorist hotbeds” while Defence Minister Israel Katz said the expansion of Israeli outposts and settlements in the West Bank is now a strategic and important aspect of Israeli security.
Listening to Israeli officials, one may think Israeli military operations and settlements in the West Bank are a reaction. But they are not. They are a strategy – a strategy of colonisation.
The settler-soldier sequence
For years, the presence of the Israeli military in the West Bank was justified by the presence of Israeli settlers. Perhaps this may have held some truth in the past, but within the past five years, the distinction between a soldier and an average Israeli settler has diminished to the fact that one wears a uniform and has a chain of command while the other dresses in jeans and can shoot on a whim.
There may be little difference between the two, but each plays a specific role in an important strategic sequencing.
First, the Israeli army weakens Palestinian communities through military operations that sweep through villages and towns, destroying infrastructure, detaining, torturing and even killing Palestinians. Then, the settler incursions increase and finally the administrative arm of the government consolidates territorial reconfiguration.
This is what happened in Jenin. The Israeli army launched several deadly offensives on the city and the refugee camp, the latest being “Operation Iron Wall” in 2025. Then the settlers came. Today, three new Israeli settlements are being built near the city with others under way in Tulkarem.
Not only do the Israeli government and security apparatus provide protection to Israeli settlers, but the reverse is also true. For years, Israeli soldiers who have committed torture, rape and murder against Palestinians were acquitted due to support and lobbying from settler groups.
This is precisely why reporting on Israeli violence in the West Bank as “settler violence” does not tell the full story. Settler violence suggests sporadic lawlessness that operates outside the state, rather than a well-thought-out strategy of colonisation of illegally occupied land.
Permanent colonial terror
For years, Palestinians spoke of settler violence as a warning of what might come. Every year of the past decade set new records in settlement expansion, land dispossession, frequency of Israeli violence and Palestinians killed.