If
in fact they are only a minority, a few dozen Jewish settlers who are
destroying olive groves, wounding harvesters, torching homes, cars and
mosques and driving communities from their homes, their output is
impressive – more than two attacks a day on average, by the military's
calculations; more than eight a day in October; more than four a day in
the November 4-10 period, according to a meticulous examination by the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and
about 15 a day according to data reaching the PLO's Negotiations Affairs
Department.
The
latter's list, unlike the UN agency's does not include only attacks
that resulted in casualties, in olives stolen and branches sawn off.
After all, for the Palestinians even a threatening march by a few armed
and masked Israelis with a herd of cows and an all-terrain vehicle into a
Palestinian spring, grove or tent encampment, or around homes on the
outskirts of a community, is a terrifying assault.
Its
purpose, like that of the bleeding attacks, is to displace people from
their land for the next proud Jewish settlement outpost.
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To
call these anomalous, marginal cases is a blatant lie: A handful of
hooligans would not have been able to displace nearly 60 Palestinian
communities since 2022, according to the organization Kerem Navot – 44
of them since October 2023, according to B'Tselem.
A few rioters would not have been able to take control, on their own,
of about 200,000 acres of West Bank land by the end of 2024, according
to a study by Kerem Navot and Peace Now.
After
all, there are organizations that bought the herds of cows and sheep
and distributed them to the young couples who ascended the mountain in
order to settle. There are institutions that supply the structures and
the security. There is a government that
provides ATVs and drones, a police force that repeatedly fails to
locate suspects and a military that arms residents of the outposts and
also protects them during their raids on the neighboring village.
If
suddenly there is talk about a few rotten apples, it's because a few
television channels deviated from their silence and broadcast a small
sample of the videos of Jewish violence that are circulating freely on
social media. The flavor-of-the-month shock, therefore, is
self-deception.
- Under the radar, quiet and persistent population transfer is underway in the West Bank
- IDF reports surge in West Bank settler attacks, says police and Shin Bet looking away
- Violent settlers are 'fringe teens' but can 'destabilize' West Bank, IDF source says
This
is a process of organized and calculated violence that began in the
second half of the 1990s and intensified during the 2000s. Settlement outposts were
established frequently, generating cycles of violence against
Palestinians. To avoid "friction," the military prevented and prevents
the legal owners and cultivators of the land from reaching it.
The
outposts have been expanding. Some of them are already neighborhoods of
existing settlements that invite the Israeli masses to purchase
"boutique" one-family homes in them. And the process continues
tirelessly, on an upward trajectory that has peaked under the current
government. The purported handful succeeds because its violence serves
official policy. It's only if the Israeli public renounces it that the
"handful" of rioters can only be stopped.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
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