Israeli Military Joins In on Settlers’ War to Displace Palestinian Bedouins

AL-MUARAJAT, WEST BANK — It was early on a mid-September day when a group of Israeli settlers arrived at a small Palestinian Bedouin school in the occupied West Bank. In short order, they stormed the building. Armed and emboldened, the settlers threw rocks, broke windows, and injured several students and teachers. Children scrambled for safety while their teachers tried to shield them.

When the Israeli military arrived, however, it wasn’t to intervene and stop the attack. Instead, the soldiers had come only to arrest the school’s headmaster, who had been taken to a hospital for his injuries. 

In the past year, another, less-remarked-upon war against the Palestinians has intensified in the West Bank. Settler violence surged and the military has responded with increasing, and more brazen, complicity.

Instead of maintaining order in its occupation, the army acts as an enforcer for the settlers. With figures like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — a staunch advocate for the annexation of the West Bank — gaining power, settler aggression has transformed into an overt strategy aimed at pushing Palestinians off their land. 

“The military, rather than serving as a neutral arbiter, has become an enforcer of this strategy, shielding settlers and punishing the victims.”

Since October 7, there has been a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has resulted in numerous casualties, mass displacement, and significant property damage. According to Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 700 settler attacks have been recorded, with over 1,200 Palestinians displaced, including 600 children, from rural herding communities. In nearly half of these incidents, Israeli soldiers were present in uniform, either participating in or failing to intervene in the violence.

The violence has been especially harrowing for Palestinian Bedouins, a semi-nomadic people the U.N. has said “suffer the brunt of the occupation.”

The settlers’ assaults are more than just acts of aggression. They are the vanguard of a campaign to push Palestinians out, said Hassan Mleihat, who oversees the nongovernmental Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights. “The military, rather than serving as a neutral arbiter, has become an enforcer of this strategy, shielding settlers and punishing the victims. This dynamic, sanctioned at the highest levels, is about cementing control — one arrest, one land seizure, one displaced family at a time.”

The organization found that, over the last year, more than 2,500 attacks and other rights violations have been perpetrated by Israel against Palestinian Bedouins in the West Bank. The assaults on Bedouins, according to Mleihat, include terror attacks; forced displacement; vandalism of public property and services, such as water pipes, electricity lines, and solar panels; and the theft of private property.

“Fear Into the Souls of the Children”

The attack at the Bedouin school illustrates how settlers and the military now operate in tandem, pursuing a common goal of de facto annexation through fear and displacement. 

“This isn’t just an attempt to terrorize the students but also the entire community, and it is part of Smotrich’s ‘It’s either us or them’ plan,” Mleihat said.

The morning of the school attack, Rami Damanhouri, the Arab al-Kaabneh School superintendent, was at his desk working on class scheduling and sifting through a long list of administrative tasks.

“Superintendent! Superintendent!” A woman’s screams cut through the silence, jolting him. He recognized the woman as a mother who came to school earlier to register her children for the new school year. At first, he couldn’t make out her words, but her fear was palpable. “They beat me up,” she shouted, over and over.

He followed her outside to the schoolyard, and that’s when he realized she was referring to a group of Israeli settlers who had attacked the premises. 

Damanhouri acted quickly. He called the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education and as many parents as he could. He then ushered as many students and teachers as possible to the safest classrooms that had doors with locks on them. He and the teachers, however, were outnumbered. 

Armed with battens and metal rods, a group of 15 settlers started destroying chairs, tables, and windows before they zeroed in on Damanhouri, who used his body to shield the teachers. Cursing at him in Arabic, they pinned him down to the ground and beat him again before handcuffing him with zip ties and taking him outside. In what he believed was an attempt to abduct him, they threw him into the back of a van.

That was when the Israeli army arrived. Damanhouri thought it might signal the end of the attack. Instead, the soldiers let the settlers go and detained him for four hours at the school, where they subjected him to an intense interrogation. He was then held at one jail and moved to another where he was kept for four days, after his ID was confiscated.

“At one of the prisons, they made me strip, and the soldiers were able to see cuts and bruises on my body. A doctor they brought in to see me said I had seven broken ribs, a broken nose, and lots of contusions — but he only gave me a shot for scabies,” Damanhouri said.

This is not the first time the Bedouin school was attacked by settlers. One evening in October 2023, after the Hamas attack and subsequent assault on Gaza, settlers on the premises of the school dug graves for the students and placed a flower on each to “put fear into the souls of the children,” according to Mleihat.

The War in the West Bank

While the carnage in the Gaza Strip has largely overshadowed the West Bank, Israel has escalated military operations in both territories, two campaigns in the same war against Palestinians. As a result, the violence in the West Bank has reached unprecedented levels — including a revived, deadly campaign of airstrikes.

Since October 2023, at least 17 Palestinians have been killed and 400 wounded in settler-related attacks. Additionally, settlers have torched homes, seized land, and killed livestock, all while facing little to no accountability from the Israeli authorities.

Entire communities in the West Bank have been targeted and forcibly displaced. In the villages of Khirbet Zanuta and Khirbet al-Ratheem near Hebron, the largest city in the southern West Bank, settlers and soldiers jointly raided villages, destroyed homes, and coerced residents to flee with death threats. As a result, dozens of families are now living in precarious conditions, unable to return to their lands due to military restrictions.

Smotrich, a key figure in the religious right-wing coalition, has emerged as a pivotal force in reshaping the West Bank. Known for his hard-line pro-settlement stance, Smotrich has not only pushed for their expansion but also managed to secure a substantial shift in authority over the region.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu granted Smotrich direct control over the Civil Administration, which oversees Israeli settlements, effectively giving the government minister control over key areas in the West Bank that were traditionally under the military’s purview. This new administrative framework, which he has described as a “mega-dramatic” change, has led to increased settlement construction, the authorization of new outposts, and a surge in land appropriations.

The power shift has emboldened Smotrich to accelerate settlement growth at an unprecedented rate. Since his appointment, settlement construction approvals have soared, with thousands of new units slated for development, making this period the most intensive for expansion in over a decade.

Smotrich has openly stated that his aim is to cement Israeli control over the West Bank and prevent any possibility of a future Palestinian state. Smotrich’s long-term vision appears to aim for a gradual, de facto annexation of the West Bank through settlement proliferation. His policies not only bolster existing settlements but also push for the legalization of outposts, settlements considered illegal even under Israeli law, some of which are built on privately owned Palestinian land. The strategy undermines prospects for a two-state solution by creating irreversible “facts on the ground” that make the separation of territories increasingly difficult.

The implications of the shifting power structures are profound: With the military largely sidelined, settler leaders and far-right ideologues now have unprecedented influence, enabling rapid expansion and normalization of settlements while dismantling existing military restraints.

Impunity and Complicity

The Israeli military, for its part, has also shifted its practices in the West Bank, revealing a tighter alliance between soldiers and settlers.

Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented multiple incidents where the Israeli army not only failed to prevent settler violence but also actively participated in it, expanding the practice of what are called joint operations.

In rural areas, like Ein al-Rashash, the displacement of Palestinian communities was carried out by armed settlers accompanied by soldiers.

The military has also distributed thousands of rifles to settler militias since the Gaza war began, ostensibly for “regional defense” — effectively blurring the line between official military forces and vigilante groups.

The changes mark a dangerous escalation in the West Bank. According to Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, settler attacks are often carried out with impunity, leaving Palestinian communities vulnerable and unprotected as Israeli authorities fail to prosecute settler perpetrators.

One particularly harrowing case documented by Al-Haq involved Ahmad Hijawi, a Palestinian worker attacked by settlers while traveling through the Wadi al-Seeq Bedouin community near Ramallah. Hijawi was held at gunpoint, beaten, and verbally assaulted by settlers who accused him of being a “terrorist.”

Despite the arrival of Israeli soldiers, Hijawi and his colleague were treated as intruders rather than victims. The settlers who assaulted him had a history of targeting the Bedouin community, including destroying homes and schools.

As in the attack on the Bedouin school of Arab al-Kaabneh, soldiers stood by while the settler attack continued to unfold.

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