Under cover of war, extremists are seizing Palestinian land – they hope permanently

In the Palestinian village of Battir, where ancient terraces are irrigated by a natural spring, life carries on as it has for centuries.

Part of a Unesco World Heritage site, Battir is known for its olive groves and vineyards. But now it is the latest flashpoint over settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has approved a new Jewish settlement here, taking away privately owned land for new settler houses and new outposts have been set up without even Israeli authorisation.

“They are stealing our land to build their dreams on our catastrophe,” says Ghassan Olyan, whose property is among that seized.

Unesco says it is concerned by the settlers’ plans around Battir, but the village is far from an isolated example. All settlements are seen as illegal under international law, although Israel disagrees.

“They are not caring about the international law, or local law, and even God’s law,” Mr Olyan says.

Last week, Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to the country.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an acceleration in settlement growth in the occupied West Bank.

Extremists in Israel’s government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

There are fears, too, that they seek to prolong the war in Gaza to suit their goals.

Yonatan Mizrahi from Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that monitors settlement growth, says Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, and making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He believes a “mix of rage and fear” in Israeli society after the 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed is driving settlers to seize more land, with fewer people questioning them.

A June survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that 40% of Israelis believed settlements made the country safer, up from 27% in 2013. Meanwhile, 35% of people polled said that the settlements hurt Israel’s security, down from 42%.

Mr Mizrahi worries that Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “I think it’s extremely dangerous,” he says. “It’s increasing the hate on both sides.”

Since the outbreak of the war, settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has surged.

It had already been on the rise, but in the past 10 months the UN has documented around 1,270 attacks, compared with 856 in all of 2022.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, during the same period Israeli settler harassment has forced Palestinians out of at least 18 villages in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since.

Between 7 October and August 2024, 589 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank – at least 570 by Israeli forces and at least 11 by settlers, according to the UN. They include some said to have been planning attacks as well as unarmed civilians. In the same period, Palestinians killed five settlers and nine members of Israel’s security forces.

This week, a Palestinian man aged 40 was reportedly shot dead after settlers and Israeli soldiers entered Wadi al-Rahhel, near Bethlehem. The Israeli military said stones had previously been thrown at an Israeli vehicle nearby.

Last month, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed when dozens of settlers rampaged through the village of Jit, prompting international condemnation. Israeli security forces have made four arrests and have described the incident as a “severe terror event”.

But the track record in such cases is one of virtual impunity. Israeli civil rights group Yesh Din found that, between 2005 and 2023, just 3% of official investigations into settler violence ended in a conviction.

In the letter by Ronen Bar, which was leaked to Israeli media, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service said that radical settlers were emboldened by light-handed law enforcement.

Settlers live in exclusively Jewish communities set up in parts of the West Bank.

Many settlements have the legal support of the Israeli government; others, known as outposts, and often as simple as caravans and corrugated iron sheds, are illegal even under Israeli law. But extremists build them regardless in a bid to seize more land.

In July, when the UN’s top court found for the first time that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was illegal, it said the country should halt all settlement activity and withdraw as soon as possible.

Israel’s Western allies have repeatedly described settlements as an obstacle to peace. Israel rejected the finding, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”

Now there are fears that extremists are working to make settlements in the West Bank irreversible.

They have rapidly expanded their control over the territory, with the support of the most far-right government in Israel’s history. These extremists are advancing annexation plans in the West Bank and also openly call for settling Gaza once the war is over. Settlers now serve at the heart of Israel’s government, in key ministries.

At the very time that world leaders opposed to settlements are voicing renewed enthusiasm for a two-state solution – a long-hoped for peace plan that would create a separate Palestinian state – Israeli religious nationalists, who believe all these lands rightfully belong to Israel, are vowing to make the dream of an independent Palestinian state impossible.

Analysts think this is why some politicians are refusing to accept any ceasefire deal.

“The reason they don’t want to end the conflict or go into a hostage deal is because they believe that Israel should keep on fighting until it can reach a point where it can stay inside Gaza,” says Tal Schneider, political correspondent for The Times of Israel.

“They think for the long term their ideology is more righteous,” she adds. “This is their own logic.”

Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have announced plans for five new settlements, including the one in Battir, and declared a record area of land, at least 23 sq km, for the state. This means Israel considers it Israeli land, regardless of whether it is in the occupied Palestinian territories, or privately owned by Palestinians, or both, and Palestinians are prevented from using it.

By changing facts on the ground, as the settlers describe it, they hope to move enough Israelis on to the land and build enough on it to make their presence irreversible. Their long-term hope is that Israel formally annexes the land.

Outside state-sanctioned land seizures, extremists have also rapidly established settlement outposts.

In one by al-Qanoub, north of Hebron, satellite images showed new caravans and roads had appeared in the months since the start of the war. Meanwhile, an entire Palestinian community has been forced off the land.

We drove to al-Qanoub with Ibrahim Shalalda, 50, and his 80-year-old uncle Mohammed, who told us their homes had been destroyed by settlers last November.

As we approached, an extremist settler blocked the road with his car.

Armed Israelis soon arrived. The group – some Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, with insignia on their uniforms and one identified as a settlement security officer – stopped us for checks.

The settlement guard forced the two Palestinian farmers from the car and searched them. After two hours, the IDF soldiers dispersed the settlers and allowed the BBC car to leave.

Israel began settling the West Bank soon after capturing it from Jordan and occupying it more than five decades ago. Successive governments since then have allowed creeping settlement expansion.

Today, an estimated three million Palestinians live on the land – excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem – alongside about half a million Jewish Israelis in more than 130 settlements.

But a prominent far-right government figure who took office in 2022 is promising to double the number of settlers to a million.

Bezalel Smotrich believes that Jews have a God-given right to these lands. He heads one of two far-right, pro-settler parties that veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought into his governing coalition after the 2022 elections returned him to power.

Mr Smotrich serves as finance minister but also has a post in the defence ministry, which has allowed him to make sweeping changes to Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He has massively invested state finances in settlements, including new roads and infrastructure. But he has also created a new bureaucracy, taking powers from the military, to fast-track settler construction.

In secretly recorded remarks to supporters, Mr Smotrich boasted that he was working towards “changing the DNA” of the system and for de facto annexation that would be “easier to swallow in the international and legal context”.

Religious nationalists have sat on the fringes of Israeli politics for decades.

But their ideology has slowly become more popular. In the 2022 election, these parties took 13 seats in the 120-seat Israeli parliament and became kingmakers in Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

During the war, Bezalel Smotrich and fellow radical Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, have repeatedly made comments stoking social division and provoking Israel’s Western allies.

After Israel’s military arrested reservists accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, Mr Ben Gvir said it was “shameful” for Israel to arrest “our best heroes”. This month, Mr Smotrich suggested it might be “justified and moral” to starve Gazans.

But it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the far right seeks to make permanent changes. “This is a group of Israelis who have been against any type of compromise with the Palestinians or Israel’s other Arab neighbours,” says Anshel Pfeffer, a veteran Israeli journalist and correspondent for The Economist.

And with the war in Gaza, the far right sees a fresh opportunity. Mr Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents to leave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

Although Mr Netanyahu has ruled out restoring Jewish settlements in Gaza, he remains beholden to far-right parties who threaten to collapse his coalition if he signs a “reckless” ceasefire deal to bring home Israeli hostages currently held by Hamas.

The logic of the extremists may be one that only a minority of Israelis follow. But it is helping to prolong the war, and dramatically transforming the landscape of the West Bank – causing long-term damage to chances of peace.

Top picture: Getty Images

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