Israeli settlers take advantage of the armed conflicts in Gaza to confiscate land from Palestinians in the West Bank. This has been the case for the last few decades. These days, however, the pace and volume of land theft and community expulsion is the highest since the second Intifada (2000-2005).
Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu’s government is encouraging the expansion of settlements and the expulsion of people, the vast majority of whom are Bedouins, living in rural areas.
The expulsions are violent. They are carried out by settlers armed with pistols and M-16 assault rifles. The Israeli army does not prevent it. On the contrary, in many cases, he is a necessary accomplice. There are numerous examples of soldiers being present at the time of the assault on defenseless Palestinians.
B’Tselem, a Jewish human rights organization, has counted 16 communities forcibly evacuated since October 7, representing more than a thousand people who have been forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in the cities.
The evacuations have been, above all, in the hills south of Hebron and in a strip about 20 kilometers long that runs from north to south between Ramallah and Jericho.
The expulsions respond to a strategy: alter the demographic composition of the West Bank and break the geographical continuity of the Palestinian territory so that the creation of a State is unviable.
Israel intends to have no Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank, the 60% of the territory it completely controls and has de facto annexed. 300,000 Palestinians and 400,000 Jewish settlers live there.
The Oslo agreements divided the West Bank into three zones: A, B and C. Zone A corresponds to cities, B to the suburbs and C to rural areas. The Palestinian Authority governs area A and civil affairs in area B. Israel provides security in area B and governs area C alone.
For the past thirty years, Israel has harassed Palestinians living in Area C to abandon their lands and seek refuge in Areas A or B, urban areas that are easy to control and isolate. On unoccupied land, it builds colonies that most countries, as well as the United Nations, consider to be illegal.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects victims in conflict zones, prohibits the occupying force from displacing the local population, but this is precisely what Israel has done since it conquered the West Bank in 1967.
During the first years of the occupation, there were hardly any settlers in the West Bank. The local population coexisted with the Israelis. In Israel the Labor party governed. In 1977, when the right took power, there were barely 4,000 settlers.
The conservatives, however, won those elections with a promise to subsidize settlements and expand them. Since then, the settlers have received financial aid and tax advantages, as well as protection and social services.
In just six years, from 1977 to 1983, 20,000 settlers settled in the West Bank. From then on, the growth was exponential. In 1993 there were already 116,000, in 2012 they reached half a million and today they exceed 700,000, adding to the 230,000 who live in East Jerusalem, the part of the city that was reserved for the Palestinian capital, but which Israel annexed in 1980.
The UN estimates that these 700,000 Israeli settlers live in 279 settlements. Some are ultra-Orthodox and others are ultra-nationalists who believe that Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank, are Israeli territory. There are also lay people who simply take advantage of the subsidies.
Netanyahu’s government has accelerated the construction of more homes for them. In June, he gave permission for more than 5,000 despite warnings against the White House. Even though he is his main ally, President Biden barely has any influence over Netanyahu.
Peace Now, a Jewish organization opposed to settlements, claims that this year the construction of more than 13,000 Jewish homes in the West Bank has been approved. It is triple those that were authorized in 2022.
Since October 7 alone, Peace Now has counted four new outposts and nine roads to link them to the already established colonies and the roads that connect them and that are exclusive to Israelis.
The outposts are precarious installations that the most radical, messianic and ultra-Orthodox settlers place where they want to expand the area under Israeli rule. They are usually at the top of the hills. From there they harass the shepherds and farmers who intend to continue on their lands.
Organizations that defend human rights assure that the settlers are the arm of the State to occupy Palestinian lands and isolate the inhabitants. They talk about apartheid and colonialism, about dispossession, oppression and humiliation of the local population. The use of violence is indiscriminate and the impunity of the settlers is almost total.
Activists like Guy Hirschfeld, a member of the small but combative Israeli peace camp, equate the aggressive expansion of the colonies with the pogroms, deportations and ethnic cleansing that Jews suffered in Europe.
Attacks on Palestinians and their property have spiked since October 7. In these two months there have been more than 250 deaths, including four Israelis.
Netanyahu has placed the management of the settlements and the future of the West Bank in the hands of Ministers Itamar Ben Gvir, National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, Finance, who has just enabled a budget allocation of one hundred million dollars for the settlers.
Settler leader Smotich compares Palestinians to Nazis. “There are two million Nazis in Judea and Samaria – he said – who hate us as much as the Hamas-Islamic State Nazis in Gaza.”
Ben Gvir, who has been condemned as a racist and advocate of violence, considers that the right of the Israelis to the West Bank is greater than that of the Palestinians. Netanyahu has entrusted him with the border police, which is a militarized body.
Smotrich and Ben Gvir defend the annexation of the West Bank and act with this purpose. Little by little they extend the Israeli civil administration over the military one, an unmistakable sign of how occupation is transformed into annexation.
It seems clear that the longer the war in Gaza lasts, the more Palestinians will lose their possessions and the more this de facto annexation will be consolidated.
A few days ago, Elana Kaminka, mother of an Israeli soldier who fell in Gaza, wrote in Haretz a transcendental reflection on the violence of the Israeli State in Palestine and the future of Israel. She began by asking whether seven million Israeli Jews can forcibly rule seven million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself. “The price,” she answered, “is enormous in democratic values ??and violence.” “Does anyone believe that Israel needs more security and protection?” She added. Her conclusion was very clear: “We have seen that there is no wall high enough to contain hate.”
