Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank - visualized

[Celerity]

International attention is on Gaza – but attacks by Israelis who live on Palestinian land have been increasing

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/israel-settlers-violence-against-palestine-west-bank



While international attention has been turned toward Gaza, violence against Palestinians has increased in the West Bank too. Israeli settler attacks have become more frequent. Settlers are Israeli citizens who live on Palestinian land. In most cases, this happens because Palestinians are prevented from accessing their land and are physically attacked by settlers. In a third of cases, Palestinian property is damaged by settlers. These findings come from a UN report published in September 2023 that showed a years-long rise in settler violence against Palestinians. Because of these numbers, the UN has noted that “settler-driven displacement did not start with Hamas’s deadly attack”.

snip

The Israeli government routinely acknowledges these colonies as part of the Israeli state despite the fact that they are illegal under international law. For decades, the United States has publicly condemned settlements while continuing to provide billions of dollars to Israel. But this longstanding policy was reversed by the Trump administration in November 2019 when it stated that it didn’t consider settlements to be a violation of international law “per se”. In fact, article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.



Biden’s administration had been relatively quiet on this point until tensions with Israel rose in February and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, stated: “New settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.” Blinken, who was responding to a reporter’s question about Israeli plans to build 3,300 new homes in West Bank settlements, added: “They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion and in our judgment this only weakens, it doesn’t strengthen, Israel’s security.” Settlements have been one of the main sticking points in peace negotiations, since the rapid growth of these outposts could in effect eliminate hopes for a Palestinian state. About 40% of the West Bank is currently under the control of settlements. The numbers displayed here are incomplete. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which collects this data, notes that “cases of harassment, trespass, and intimidation are not included in these statistics when they do not result in damage or casualties, although they too increase the pressure on Palestinians to leave”. Settler violence is unlikely to slow down. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, leads a coalition government that includes several religious Zionist parties that support further annexation of the West Bank. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has found that “as a rule, the military prefers to remove Palestinians from their own farmland or pastureland rather than confront settlers”.

This has also been the case in recent months, when Israeli forces have accompanied or supported settler attacks in almost half of all incidents, according to the UN. In over a third of the incidents reported since October, settlers threatened Palestinians with firearms, including by opening fire. The thousands of Palestinians who have been forced from their homes have little recourse to justice. In four out of every five cases, Israeli police failed in the investigation of Israelis who harmed Palestinians and their property. This finding comes from Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that has investigated the way Israeli law enforcement treats these settler attacks. It found that between 2005 and 2021, just 3% of ideologically motivated cases resulted in a conviction. Demolition is also a key part of settlement. Israeli authorities regularly destroy and confiscate Palestinian-owned property. They also prohibit construction by Palestinians while issuing permits to Israelis. About 24,300 housing units for Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced last year. In March 2024, after plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes were announced, the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, condemned the move, stating that the constructions “fly in the face of international law”.

[Lonestarblue]

1. Israel has used the distraction of the Gaza war to ramp up settler violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Bibi’s goal is to force all Palestinians out of Palestine or murder them if they refuse to leave. The US should sanction the entire country, ot just the violent settlers.

[Jim__]

2. The New York Review of Books May 9 issue also has an article on the violence in the West Bank

From the May 9 issue of The New York Review of Books Israel:The Way Out - behind a paywall - by David Shulman

David Shulman

David Shulman is the author of Tamil: A Biography, among other books. He is a Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was awarded the Israel Prize for Religious Studies in 2016. He is a longtime activist with Ta’ayush, the Arab–Jewish Partnership, in the occupied Palestinian territories. (May 2024)

An excerpt from the article:

Most eyes are focused now on Gaza, for good reason. The catastrophe is there for all to see. But I want to begin with the Palestinian village of Mu‘arrajat, in the Jordan Valley on the occupied West Bank. In mid-March I stayed overnight there with other activists, in what we call “protective presence”—a concerted effort to protect Palestinian villagers from the rampages of armed Israeli settlers who are terrorizing them day and night. Mu‘arrajat now has two settler outposts at its throat, one deep in the grazing grounds of the Palestinian shepherds (forbidden territory for them since the war in Gaza began) and another on the hill above the village. In October settlers from these outposts were stopping Palestinians’ cars on the highway and telling their occupants that they had twenty-four hours to leave their homes and that they would be killed if they refused. A few weeks ago these settlers came into the village and dug a row of empty graves near the school—a sign of what they want to do to the people of Mu‘arrajat.

Violent intrusions by masked, heavily armed settlers, often together with soldiers, are by now routine. The honorific term “soldiers” in the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills really refers to paramilitary units, in uniform, made up of settlers who have been armed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the convicted criminal and Jewish supremacist whom Benjamin Netanyahu appointed minister of national security in November 2022. They are a law unto themselves.

The settlers’ mantra—“Get out or we will kill you”—has been repeated in nearly all the villages in the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills. Most of our friends in the villages have heard it. Usually it is uttered in the course of attacks on Palestinian homes, sheep pens, food supplies, water tanks and wells, wind turbines, and anything else the invaders can wreck. Sometimes these settlers shoot at the villagers and kill sheep and goats. We know of at least sixteen Palestinian villages that have been evacuated over the last few months because of ceaseless settler violence backed by the army; many more are barely hanging on. International pressure has had some meaningful impact on the situation, but for the most part the settlers are winning this miniwar. They tend to be fanatical men or adolescent boys, brainwashed, apocalyptic, and messianic, who have emerged from the dark and brutal undercurrents of religious Zionism. They want to rid the West Bank of all non-Jews (and maybe some secular Jews as well) in order to hasten the arrival of the Messiah, who is scheduled to turn up as soon as this campaign of ethnic cleansing is completed. But the ideological motivation is only part of the story; we who have seen these people in action, who have met them in the field, can confirm that many of them are driven by sheer sadistic pleasure.

Is it even possible today to imagine an end to the occupation and to the settlement enterprise on the West Bank? Maybe not. The entire political system, with the exception of the tiny constituency on the far left, is mortgaged to that project. But none of this happened in a vacuum. Palestinians have to examine their own acts just as Israelis must examine theirs. The suicide bombers of the second intifada (2000–2005) more or less destroyed the Israeli peace camp—by far the Palestinians’ most important ally in the 1990s—and the atrocities of Hamas on October 7 probably wiped out most of the remaining pockets of moderation and hope in Israel.

Maybe when, or if, the Gaza war ends, this mood will change. But the present government and the man who heads it see the Gaza war, with its unthinkable losses and devastation, as instrumental in the long-term goal of maintaining Israel’s occupation. Netanyahu and his ministers are disconnected from reality; they live comfortably enough with the humanitarian disaster of Gaza, and they are incapable of conceiving of a viable future for the state of Israel. They are in denial when it comes to the very real possibility that Israel, under their direction, is on the fast track to self-destruction.

more ...

[electric_blue68]

3. Oh, that last graph is So sad. Besides injuries, deaths, burnt homes, etc...

all those trees!
Trees for shade, for foods for self and sale re: olives, figs, other fruits, etc.
I don't know how many could afford to replace them. And a tree in a new spot has to usually be carefully watched to make sure it's adjusting properly.

I may support Israel's right to exist, but I've been disgusted by these West Bank settlers actions for a long time!

[Big Blue Marble]

4. So many of the olive trees are so very old.

They have been passed down and cared for by
many generations of Palestinian families. It
has been their livelihood.

The process of destroying the trees is part of the process of ethnically cleansing the people from their homes and their culture. It is a deep tragedy which until recently has gone mostly unnoticed in the West.

[electric_blue68]

5. Was responding to you quite earlier when my phone crashed...

😔 This makes hideious sense, the sick bastards!

I hadn't thought about how old many of those trees are, but of course!

While I've never been these - I'm half Second Gen Greek-American. Our people came from the more northernly mountains region vs the more Aegein sea oriented coast line, and islands.

I'm sure there were olive trees, and groves around up there.
I've seen a few photos of olive trees in Greece.

It's just awful!