Yossi Mekelberg
Conflicts bring with them many wrongs and very few rights. Some of them are open to interpretation, but there are also certain acts that are indisputably illegal and immoral and a cause of aggravation in an already highly charged situation. Such is the case of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Until now, there has hardly been any genuine effort to stamp out this ugly behavior. However, this situation seems to be changing somewhat, with moves not by the Israeli authorities but at least by certain members of the international community.
Within a short space of time, the US, the UK and also Belgium have announced punitive measures against settlers who are involved in attacks on Palestinians; attacks that range from verbal abuse to actual bodily harm and even murder.
Early last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that his country would impose travel bans on extremist Jewish settlers implicated in attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On X, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter wrote: “Violent settlers will be denied entry into Belgium and I will be proposing that Belgium advocates for an EU-wide travel ban.” And in the UK, Foreign Secretary David Cameron used the same social media platform to announce: “We are banning those responsible for settler violence from entering the UK to make sure our country cannot be a home for people who commit these intimidating acts.” It remains to be seen whether other EU member countries, or any from outside the bloc, will follow suit, but this is the first time that some momentum has been built up behind calls for the Israeli government to take much firmer action to stop settler violence and hold its perpetrators accountable. Until these measures were announced, the response to this exponentially growing, ugly and damaging behavior was no more than lip service. And it is doubtful whether these measures alone, as much as they represent a step in the right direction, could stop a phenomenon that is fueled by extreme far-right, religious and xenophobic sentiments that enjoy, at least tacitly, the support of the Israeli government.
For years, the international community failed, without exception, to stop the most deliberate and detrimental obstacle to any peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on a two-state solution: the ongoing Israeli settlement project in the West Bank. From a small and insignificant messianic dream of extreme Orthodox religious-nationalist Jewish members of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) movement to settle the land of their ancestry, five decades later there emerged a nightmare for those who envisage a peace agreement between two sovereign Israeli and Palestinian states that would coexist peacefully side by side.
A monstrous network of settlements has now become the home of more than 700,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, supported by an infrastructure that mainly serves these settlements but not the local Palestinian population. This network has been deliberately designed to prevent a Palestinian state from ever becoming a reality, while the Palestinians who live there have been marginalized and discriminated against.
Not only has this been done in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but also in contradiction of the very logic of settling this long-running conflict in a satisfactory and sustainable manner for both sides. Furthermore, those in the international community who have had the power to stop the settlement project have done absolutely nothing. It remains to be seen how a future peace agreement might be reached despite the expansion of the settlements, but what cannot wait any longer is the urgent need to deal with those groups of settlers that are resorting to violence, intimidation and coercion against ordinary Palestinians, while usually targeting the most vulnerable among them. They do this not only with complete impunity, but on many occasions with the protection of the Israeli security forces.
I have previously argued that, by staying silent in the face of settler violence, the entire Israeli society is complicit in these abhorrent acts of cruelty. I would also like to argue that the same applies to the international community and the organs of collective security that have also made a conscious decision to turn a blind eye to this phenomenon. Admittedly, the vast majority of settlers are not involved in any actual violence against the local Palestinian population. However, there is a persistent group of the most extreme settlers, mostly known to Israel’s security forces, who engage in this terrorist activity. And what makes it more concerning is that they have representatives in the Knesset, including in key government positions.
Members of the ultranationalist-religious Jewish Power party are reported to be putting pressure on the prison service to improve the conditions of convicted Jewish terrorists. One of its Knesset members, Limor Son Har-Melech, has described Amiram Ben Uliel, a terrorist serving three life sentences plus 20 years for a deadly firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma, in which three members of the same family were burned alive while another was badly injured, as a “holy righteous man.” No one on either side of this conflict who commits such deplorable acts of terrorism should ever be described in these terms because not only are they terrorists but also enemies of those on both sides who would like to coexist peacefully. Moreover, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, last year called for the state to “erase” the Palestinian town of Huwara after it was attacked by rampaging Jewish settlers. Should those who incite or glorify such acts of violence not themselves be banned from entry to countries that respect the rule of law?
There is an obvious link between the decisions of certain countries to bar violent settlers from entry while their governments are sticking their necks out to support Israel in its war in Gaza post-Oct. 7, despite the extremely high and utterly unacceptable death toll among civilians and the devastation inflicted upon the entire Strip. As much as denying settlers the right to enter certain countries is a step in the right direction, most pressure should be exerted on Israel’s leading politicians to stop turning a blind eye to these despicable acts by settlers and ensure that the Israeli army refrains from giving the perpetrators any protection at all when they attack Palestinians – and that those who engage in these vile, terrorist activities face the full force of the law. If the Israeli government does not take these steps, then the international community should hold it responsible for settler violence and ensure that it faces the consequences.
