Violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has reached unprecedented levels since the start of the war with Iran, with NGOs and opposition figures denouncing an environment of impunity.
While so-called "Jewish terrorism" has drawn widespread condemnation both in Israel and abroad, little has been done to curb it, said AFP.
Assaults by violent settlers against Palestinians have been carried out for years, often to the indifference of mainstream Israeli society.
But the recent surge has prompted criticism from influential rabbis, settler leaders and even military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who described the attacks as "morally and ethically unacceptable".
According to Reem Cohen, a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), "there has been an increase in acts of Jewish terrorism since the start of the war with Iran", along with a rise in "the severity of the acts".
In an interview with AFP, Cohen, who authored a report on the issue in January, denounced the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators.
"The Israeli government and security forces... have not responded with determination," Cohen wrote in his report.
One of the first measures taken by Defense Minister Israel Katz upon assuming office in 2024 was to cancel administrative detention -- a form of virtually unlimited custody -- for Israeli suspects of violent crimes in the West Bank. It was maintained for Palestinians.
At least six Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of March in violence attributed to extremist settlers.
That figure for the whole of 2024 stood at five, according to UN data.
"Jewish terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank has evolved from marginal, local incidents into a widespread phenomenon that occurs as part of a fight for control of the territory and an increasing effort to uproot Palestinian presence," Cohen wrote.
- 'Ideological support' -
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live there in settlements considered illegal by the UN, among some three million Palestinians.
Settlement building in the territory has continued under every Israeli government since the occupation began.
But it has accelerated significantly under the current coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which contains far-right parties and is considered one of the most right-wing in Israeli history.
It has surged even more since the October 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas that triggered the Gaza war.
After the outbreak of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, groups of radicalized settlers living outside formal settlements, known as the "hilltop youth", pursued what they called a "price tag" policy, carrying out random revenge attacks on Palestinians after every anti-Israeli assault.
Since October 7, such violence has become a daily occurrence, "with the ideological support of certain members of the government", Cohen said, in a reference to far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
During the ongoing war with Iran, the head of the left-wing Democrats party, Yair Golan, accused the government of "supporting Jewish terrorism" and harming Israel's security by forcing the army to "put out fires (the government had) lit" in the West Bank.
Videos posted on social media, sometimes by the perpetrators themselves, show hundreds of young men -- often masked and armed with sticks or automatic weapons -- entering Palestinian villages to sow terror.
- 'Hilltop barbarians' -
Violent settlers have with increased frequency torched Palestinians' homes, uprooted their olive trees and killed their cattle.
In a recent investigation into these groups, which operate mainly in rural areas near the cities of Nablus in the northern West Bank and Hebron in the south, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth called them "hilltop barbarians".
Since October 7, settlers have established more than 175 farms and outposts in the West Bank with the tacit consent of Israeli authorities.
Though illegal under Israeli law, these outposts are meant to create facts on the ground and receive protection from the army, according to the NGO Peace Now.
The hardcore "hilltop youth" reject all authority and espouse a theocratic and anti-democratic vision of Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank -- with any means to achieve it deemed legitimate.
According to several Israeli media outlets, Netanyahu recently requested that the army take action against the extremists, whom he publicly condemned in November, saying they were not representative of the settler movement.
According to the INSS, "90 percent of settler violence cases in the West Bank are closed without indictments", and Israeli soldiers, instead of arresting the culprits, at times take part in the assaults.
