The rise of paramilitary settler groups in Israel's West Bank strategy

Middle East Eye

2 days ago

Last week, just days after Israeli forces killed three men while intervening to protect settlers violently storming the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik in the occupied West Bank, an unusual wave of condemnation swept through Israeli politics and media.
But the outrage was not directed at the killing of Palestinians. It came only after settlers turned on Israeli soldiers.
On Friday night, settlers, commonly referred to in Israel as the 'Hilltop Youth', attacked soldiers stationed at an outpost near Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah. The following day, the same group stormed a nearby military base.
For a military long accustomed to escorting settlers during raids on Palestinian communities, the aggression from their usual allies was both unexpected and unsettling.
The term 'Hilltop Youth' may no longer accurately describe this group. Their structure, tactics, and growing confidence suggest they now function more as a paramilitary organisation than as an informal collection of radicalised young settlers.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Israel Katz, and politicians from across Israel's political spectrum, including members of both the coalition and the opposition, swiftly condemned the attacks on soldiers.
Yet the violent activities of these settler groups against Palestinians have continued for years with little political or legal consequence.
State-sanctioned violence
The rise of settler militias is not a new phenomenon.
During the May 2021 clashes between Jews and Palestinians, coordinated settler militias carried out simultaneous assaults on Palestinian villages across the West Bank.
These militias do not operate spontaneously but rather operate within the framework of an organization that includes several hundred-armed men.
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What has changed is the apparent formalisation of their operations under the current Israeli government.
Since Bezalel Smotrich, who also serves as Israel's finance minister, assumed control of the Civil Administration in the West Bank, these militias appear to be operating in closer alignment with a broader strategic objective: expanding Israeli control over Area C, which makes up about 60 per cent of the West Bank, effectively obstructing the possibility of establishing a future Palestinian state.
A central feature of this strategy is the proliferation of so-called 'shepherds' farms', a settlement model that allows settlers to seize large tracts of land without formal government approval and with little, if any, military resistance. These farms typically begin with just a few settlers, sometimes as few as two or three, but they quickly spread across wide areas.
Through these outposts, small groups of settlers, often linked to the Hilltop Youth, manage to assert control over vast stretches of land. The settlers who run these farms routinely intimidate and forcibly expel Palestinian herders and residents, creating de facto zones of exclusion without official annexation.
For Palestinians living in the West Bank, the violence and dispossession inflicted by these militias are neither new nor isolated.
But the recent attacks on Israeli soldiers have briefly drawn attention to these groups, exposing a reality Palestinians have long endured: that parts of the settler movement are evolving into organised, militarised forces pursuing a territorial agenda with increasing impunity.
Post-Smotrich strategy
Under Smotrich's leadership, many of these farms are now being legalised. At the same time, attacks (seemingly deliberate and coordinated) are increasing against Palestinian shepherds and Bedouin communities east of the Alon Road, particularly in the Jordan Valley.
The purpose of these attacks appears to be clear: to drive Palestinians from the area.
Recently, the settler militias have begun pushing westward from the Alon Road, moving closer to the Nablus and Ramallah regions. It remains uncertain whether the militias are receiving direct orders from Smotrich himself, but their objectives are evidently aligned.
Both are working towards a shared goal: to consolidate Israeli control over Area C and to clear it of its Palestinian inhabitants.
Smotrich's apparent aim is to ensure that these annexed areas are as devoid of Palestinians as possible, reducing the number who would have any claim to citizenship
An example of this tacit cooperation emerged in the aftermath of last Friday's events.
Smotrich declared that shooting at Jews constituted 'a red line' that must not be crossed, stating unequivocally that it was forbidden to shoot at Jews.
Settlers had initially claimed that a 14-year-old boy had been shot by Israeli soldiers, though it later emerged that the boy had been injured while throwing stones at soldiers in an entirely different location. Nevertheless, Smotrich chose to side with the Hilltop Youth's version of events.
The attack on the military base the following day forced the finance minister to publicly condemn the settlers' actions, but the shared strategic interests between the two sides remain intact.
The increased pace of attacks against Palestinians in recent times may stem from the Israeli finance minister's concern that the government will collapse or that he will not be a member of the next government. In most polls, Smotrich's Religious Zionist Party does not pass the electoral threshold.
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Smotrich is one of the most sophisticated and sharp politicians in Israel and has a developed historical consciousness.
The aggressive expansion by armed settler militias across the West Bank is not simply a series of isolated attacks; it is part of Smotrich's broader effort to establish irreversible 'facts on the ground' in the event of a change in government.
He may well be correct in his calculation. It is highly unlikely that any future Israeli government will move to dismantle shepherds' farms or outposts in the West Bank, and even less likely that it would act to restore displaced Palestinians to the lands from which they were expelled.
Smotrich may also have in mind the contours of the Trump administration's Middle East plan, which he has publicly criticised. According to that plan, much of Area C would be annexed to Israel, while a fragmented Palestinian state would exist as disconnected enclaves throughout the West Bank.
Smotrich's apparent aim is to ensure that these annexed areas are as devoid of Palestinians as possible, reducing the number of Palestinians who would have any claim to citizenship or full rights within the Israeli state.
The ongoing war in Gaza is also shaping the thinking of settler militias, as well as bolstering Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The war has created a permissive environment that seems to embolden these actors to accelerate their agenda in the West Bank.
Settler fantasy
Settlers have long harboured the ambition of emptying the West Bank of its Palestinian population. For years, this aspiration was broadly understood, even among settlers themselves, as an unattainable fantasy.
However, the near-total destruction of Gaza and the growing perception that the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip has, at least semi-explicitly, become one of the war aims of Prime Minister Netanyahu, have emboldened settler groups to believe that such a scenario might also be possible in the West Bank.
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Ethnic cleansing in the West Bank would, however, present far greater logistical and political challenges than in Gaza. Unlike Gaza, the West Bank features a more intertwined population of Palestinians and settlers.
Additionally, Jordan (positioned just across the border) would almost certainly respond with far less tolerance than Egypt in the event of any Israeli attempt to forcibly expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into its territory.
Nevertheless, some of the methods currently employed by the Israeli military in Gaza appear to be gradually making their way to the West Bank, albeit on a smaller scale.
In recent months, large sections of the Tulkarm and Jenin refugee camps, along with other areas, have been bulldozed, and hundreds of homes have been demolished by Israeli forces. The images emerging from these sites increasingly resemble those coming out of Gaza.
Even if the West Bank is not yet experiencing a full replication of the Gaza campaign, what is unfolding may well be seen as preparation for a more extensive effort by Smotrich and the settler militias to 'clear' key areas of Palestinians.
A race between thugs
Last Friday's attack on the Israeli army by settler militias marked a rare deviation from the unwritten rules that have long governed the relationship between settlers and the military in the West Bank. This breach prompted some criticism within Israel.
However, such criticism is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the militias' operations or on the broader trajectory of settlement expansion and Palestinian displacement.
Defence Minister Israel Katz, who recently revoked the use of administrative detention orders against Jewish settlers (thereby weakening the enforcement powers of the Shin Bet's Jewish Division) has now announced the formation of a new police unit tasked with addressing settler violence.
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According to Katz, the Israeli army and the Shin Bet will be involved in some capacity, but the unit will be led primarily by police officers.
In practice, however, there is little doubt that the appointment of the unit's commander will require the approval of Ben Gvir, who oversees the police and is widely seen as an ally of the settler movement.
As such, the creation of this unit appears less a genuine effort to curb settler violence and more a political manoeuvre to manage public perception. It is likely aimed at deflecting criticism rather than seriously addressing the ongoing attacks.
Public assaults on Israeli soldiers are broadly unpopular within Israel, and even Israelis from the centre and centre right oppose settler violence against Palestinians. These factors pose a potential threat to the political project advanced by Smotrich and the settler militias.
Yet despite these internal tensions, the project is unlikely to be fundamentally derailed.
Smotrich and Ben Gvir, who serve as the settler movement's most prominent representatives within the Knesset, are now deeply embedded within the core of the Israeli government, making it difficult to envisage any scenario in which this agenda is meaningfully challenged from within.
Still, as is often the case within violent movements of this nature, there may be more extreme elements who perceive Smotrich and Ben Gvir as too moderate or insufficiently committed to the cause. But this is ultimately a competition among factions driven by escalating radicalism. It is a race between thugs.