Though over the past months the world community had condemned the violence of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank and even the US and Britain as the enablers of the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza have announced sanctions on some radical leaders, the settlers, inattentive of these warnings, have broadened the scope of their atrocities against the Palestinians in this part of Palestine.
In the latest round of brutality, last week, armed settlers opened fire on Palestinian villagers in the village of Jeet in the city of Qalqilyeh in the east of the West Bank.
During this attack, 11 civilians were injured, one of them is reported to be in critical condition. Local sources said that while the settlers organized this attack against the Palestinians, the army soldiers were present at the scene and protected them.
In another crime, settlers with the support of the Israeli army raided a house in the south of Hebron in recent days and severely injured a Palestinian young man. Now this young Palestinian is under treatment.
Residents of Bedouin villages in the east of the West Bank live in a constant state of anxiety and anticipation, as settlers launch frequent attacks on these villages and are building new settlement bases with the aim of restricting their residents.
Attacks by radical settlers on Palestinians are carried out with the aim of creating terror among civilians and displacing them in order to sieze Palestinian lands.
In a report published by the National Office of Defense of Land and Resistance against Settlement, which is affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), it is warned that "the authorities of Israeli occupation are using organized terrorism throughout the West Bank and do not stop at tearing the West Bank apart. Apart from military checkpoints, iron gates and earthen mounds, they constantly attack towns and villages and camps. Amid killing, demolishing the houses, and arrests, they provide protection to the colonizers."
Palestinians in the West Bank face the double threat of unpunished settler violence on the one hand and the frenzy of state-sponsored destruction of their assets on the other hand.
Supporters of the settlers, led by Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the extremist party Religious Zionist and finance minister, are in key positions in the ministry, which gives them considerable power over the West Bank.
The UN announced on Sunday in a report that since the start of the war between the Israeli regime and Hamas on October 7, 2023, settler violence in the West Bank has displaced 1,260 Palestinians from their homes in Bedouin villages such as Umm al-Khair.
The UN has recorded 1,250 settler attacks in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, an average of four attacks per day.
According to these data, about 120 of these attacks killed or wounded Palestinians, and about 1,000 of them caused damage to Palestinian assets and properties.
Also, according to Al-Bidar non-profit organization, residents of 28 Bedouin villages and communities have been displaced since the Gaza war. Palestinians in these communities live under the siege of Israeli settlements and have no choice but to resist the occupiers' push to sieze their lands and destroy their homes.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Refugees announced a few days ago that "forcible evictions due to settler attacks and crimes have affected 40 Palestinian communities in different areas of the West Bank." This crime amounts to the level of ethnic cleansing and is within the framework of the gradual annexation of the West Bank, its evacuation of its inhabitants and original owners, and its appropriation as a strategic depth. Also, in serves an agenda to undermine any opportunity to establish the independent state of Palestine with Eastern Al-Quds as its capital.
The Palestinians and rights groups have several times accused the police forces and Israeli army of inaction in the face of the barbarism of the settlers against the West Bankers and even involvement in these attacks. They also talk about lack of legal actions against the violence of the settlers.
Settlers, the unofficial army of Tel Aviv
Opinions and analyzes differ on the position of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government towards these attacks and whether the PM is giving the settlers a green light or whether they are just arbitrary actions carried out by extremists, but the fact is that the settlers are acting as a military and security arm of the government at a time the regular army is involved in war in Gaza.
Extremist settlers who have escalated the tensions in the West Bank by attacking the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and holding flag marches in the past years are playing the role of the army now that the occupation army is grounded in Gaza and cannot engage in other fronts.
Extremist settlers who are armed commit the same crimes in the West Bank that the military commits in Gaza.
The settlers are armed to carry out the occupation plans. Last year, Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued an order to distribute weapons among the settlers under the pretext that every citizen would defend himself against the Palestinians, an action that was completely in line with the plan to create atmosphere of repression in the West Bank.
According to Aljazeera, data from the firearms licensing department of the Israeli Ministry National Security show that since the beginning of the Gaza war until the end of May, more than 320,000 applications for weapons permits have been submitted, and 130,000 licenses have been issued to applicants, including those in West Bank settlements.
According to Knesset Security Committee estimates published by the Hebrew website Shomrim in early July 2022, by 2021, there were 150,000 weapons in the hands of some 750,000 settlers in the West Bank and occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem), but by 2023, as expected, they rose to 165,000 weapons.
Given the barbarism of the settlers, the increase in the arming of the settlers means the spread of danger to the lives and property of all Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Having in mind that in the past two years, the West Bank has become the second front of resistance in the occupied territories, the hard-line Israeli cabinet has decided to contain the security crisis in this region through the settlers in order to eliminate, through spread of terror, possibility of activities of resistance cells in this region.
On the other hand, it seems that the unofficial army of settlers is the main instrument of the government to implement the development plan of the settlements and practically annex the illegal settlements of the past to the occupied lands until the complete occupation of the entire West Bank lands.
The current hard-line cabinet insists more than any other government in the 76-year history of the Israeli regime on the construction of settlements in the West Bank, and for this reason, it has given the settlers the leeway to develop construction projects in the West Bank.
While some settlers are expanding their network of illegal agricultural posts on the hills of the West Bank, others in the far-right government are increasing settlements in this area.
Last month, Netanyahu's cabinet legalized five previously unauthorized settlements and carried out the largest land grab in the West Bank in three decades by declaring large tracts of land as state land.
The extremist settlers, who are strongly supported by the extremist ministries and know that there is no punishment for them if they kill Palestinians, are expanding the scope of violence in the West Bank day by day.
Under leadership of Ben-Gvir, the settlers are seeking to establish a Jewish state and finalize Al-Quds as its capital by evicting all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, and for this reason, the start of the Gaza war is an opportunity to achieve their long-standing dream. In the meantime, there is a division of duties between the army and the settlers to implement their ambitious project in the West Bank and Gaza.
Time for West Bank intifada
The continuous attacks by settlers on the West Bank represent a wake-up call to the residents of this part of Palestine, telling them that they need to start an intifada (uprising) beside the war Gaza resistance is fighting against the occupation.
The Gaza war has clearly shown that the Israeli occupiers do not commit to any international laws and that diplomacy makes no sense for them and they only understand the language of force and any tolerance in this regard only encourages the enemy for further occupation and displacement of Palestinians.
If the residents of the West Bank do not act in time and do not stand up against the genocide and the crimes of the settlers, the repetition of the Gaza tragedy in the West Bank will not be far from expected.
Indeed, opening a second front will put the Israeli enemy in a tight spot and siezes the initiative from it, and this is the biggest obsession of Tel Aviv leaders. After all, West Bank is close to Israeli settlements and strategic areas in Tel Aviv and Al-Quds as the heart of the occupied Palestine and in case of eruption of clashes, tens of thousands of settlers will be subjected to threat.
The recent examples of Palestinian suicidal operations in Tel Aviv showed the high level of vulnerability and the deadly effects of the repetition of these attacks on the psychological, political, social and economic condition of the Israelis.
The Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas should also wake up from their sleep and accept the reality that for the extremists in Tel Aviv, there is no difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and if they are freed up from Gaza, they will implement the occupation project in the West Bank.
In recent months, Netanyahu multiple times said that he will not allow Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza post-war, something disclosing the fact that Abbas is an expired piece for Tel Aviv leaders, and after stabilization of security and political conditions in Gaza, they have plan for removing the Palestinian Authority.
Despite support of the hard-line ministers to the settler attacks on the West Bank, security officials are worried that growing violence may ignite Operation Al-Aqsa Storm this time in the West Bank.
The Israeli security and military institutions are afraid
that escalated tensions may stir an uprising that will raise a big front
parallel to the southern and northern fronts, as in recent weeks
Palestinian operations dragged into Tel Aviv and depth of occupied
territories from the West Bank, spreading horor among the Israelis.
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