Israeli settler terror unmasked

A new report by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s Negotiations Affairs Department marks the 78^th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba. It argues that violent attacks against Palestinians by Israeli colonial settlers in the occupied West Bank are not isolated incidents. Instead, they are part of a coordinated and institutionalised system, tied directly to settlement expansion and territorial control.

Settler violence is the main method of consolidating control over Palestinian land

The report, titled Israeli Settler Terror Unmasked: State institutional roles, legal tools, and international legal consequences, documents an escalating pattern of violence carried out by these illegal colonists against Palestinian communities across the occupied territory.

It argues that this settler violence is now a main method of dispossession, fragmenting communities and consolidating Israeli occupation control over Palestinian land. Alongside settlement construction, land confiscation, military restrictions, and political policy, this violence aims to weaken Palestinian presence in strategically important areas of the West Bank.

The report claims that settlement expansion and settler violence are both components of a wider territorial project by the Israeli occupation government:

enabled, financed, legitimised, and operationalised through government portfolios, [with terror being] a central mechanism and a key tool of this territorial control.

This project seeks to expand control over the occupied territory, while eroding Palestinian protection. Through its various ministries, military bodies, legal mechanisms, educational structures, and grassroots settler networks, the Israeli occupation’s government now operates through a unified annexation system that shapes conditions on the ground.

Multiple ministries play a role in facilitating settlement growth, infrastructure development, and security arrangements across the occupied West Bank. The report highlights ministries responsible for defence coordination, settlements and national missions, transportation, agriculture, heritage, communications, and national security. Budget allocations, sometimes amounting to billions of Shekels, cited in the report include funding for settler only roads, improvement of settler communication coverage, support of settler “shepherds”, theft of West Bank heritage sites, and the arming of illegal settlers.

Land, law and territorial transformation

The report describes how land is being reclassified and controlled, and it outlines a series of mechanisms – legal, administrative, and military – through which land is transferred, restricted, or reallocated.

These include declarations of “state land,” the use of military zones, nature reserve designations, and infrastructure-related confiscations. Far from being neutral planning tools, the purpose of these is to gradually reduce Palestinian access to land, while enabling illegal settlement expansion.

According to the report, “colonial farm installations”, also known as outposts:

serve as the ultimate method of annexing land for settlement purposes.

They are a key instrument in controlling large areas of rural land. Through grazing, fencing, surveillance infrastructure, and informal settlement expansion, hundreds of thousands of dunums of land have been brought under such control in recent years, with the vast majority located in Area C, where civil and military authority remains under Israeli occupation control. By 2025, 14 percent of the occupied West Bank was controlled by 156 of these colonial farm installations.

Beyond institutions and land policy, the report turns to what it calls the “educational ecosystem” sustaining a radical settler ideology. It describes a network of religious schools, pre-military academies, youth movements, and informal educational environments that collectively shape identity and political outlook:

systematically embedding exclusionary, supremacist, and anti-Palestinian worldviews into the consciousness of large segments of Jewish youth.

This system, the report states, ensures a worldview that is centered on entitlement to “holy land” and confrontation. Expansion is normalised and terror is enabled on the ground. Yeshivot and Hesder programmes combine religious study with military service, producing graduates who view settlement activity as a civic and spiritual duty. Youth movements and informal hilltop communities are described as reinforcing these ideas through direct engagement with land, agriculture, and territorial activity.

Education, religious figures and institutions normalise settler violence and settlement expansion

Influential religious figures and organisations shape ideological narratives that emphasise historical entitlement to the land and religious duty tied to territorial expansion. These messages contribute to a generational culture that normalises violence and expansion.

The report also focuses on “patterns of settler terror” targeting Palestinian civilians and communities since October 2023. It documents a range of incidents including assaults on farmers, destruction of property, arson attacks, livestock theft, and damage to water infrastructure. These events are presented not as isolated outbreaks but as recurring patterns that intensify during agricultural seasons, especially the olive harvest. The report highlights repeated targeting of rural communities, especially in Area C, where the Israeli occupation authorities maintain full control and settlers operate with impunity. This reflects:

a deliberate strategy to render Palestinian life unviable.

Testimonies included in the report describe coordinated attacks involving groups of settlers, often masked and armed, who carry out raids on agricultural land, homes, and vehicles. The violence is often supported or tolerated by the Israeli occupation authorities,

Reference is also given to religious sites, including mosques and churches, which have been damaged or attacked in separate incidents. Water infrastructure is another recurring focus, with repeated allegations of sabotage of wells, pumps, and irrigation systems. The overall effect, over time, is not only physical damage and destruction, but a gradual erosion of Palestinian rural life and economic viability.

The Israeli occupation operates an apartheid legal and enforcement system in the occupied West Bank, which works hand-in-hand with settlers attacking Palestinians. This creates conditions that almost always enable settlers to evade accountability, whatever their crime.

Settlers, police, army, courts and government all work together against Palestinians, but are illegal under international law

According to the report, Israeli occupation military and police “often show passivity-or even direct involvement-in settler terror attacks”, while 94 percent of investigations into settler-related violence are closed without any indictment.

Settler colonial terrorism in the territory of the State of Palestine is part of Israel’s apartheid regime, illegal under international law. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also deemed the entire Israeli occupation of Palestine as illegal.

International law places a series of obligations on Israel, third states, and international institutions. Israel must immediately end its occupation of Palestinian territory, stop all its settlement expansion, and remove settlers from occupied areas. The Israeli occupation is also required to provide reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by occupation and settler violence, including compensation, restitution, and guarantees of non-repetition.

The report argues that Israel has a legal duty to investigate and prosecute settlers and state officials accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity, while dismantling its apartheid system based on systematic domination over Palestinians. This, it says, would require structural reforms, including changes to legal and educational institutions.

Other countries are obligated not to recognise “Israeli” annexation or settlements as lawful, and should avoid supporting activities linked to the occupation. It calls on states and international bodies to pursue accountability through sanctions, universal jurisdiction cases, and support for investigations by the International Criminal Court.

The report aims to shift attention away from isolated incidents, towards what it describes as “structural conditions of control, displacement, and impunity”, which is the current reality on the ground.

Featured image via PLO 

By Charlie Jaay

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