Supporters of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory for decades were quick to welcome Donald Trump’s recent US election victory, which they clearly hope will aid their goal of formally annexing the West Bank.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler, was confident enough to set a date for that aspiration at a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday.
He said, “2025 will be the year that Judea and Samaria will rule with God’s help.”
Smotrich added that he plans to work with “President Trump’s new administration and the international community” toward that goal.
For Palestinians who still harbor hope that the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, will one day become the basis of a Palestinian state, this is one more worry on an already bleak horizon.
Dror Etkes, an Israeli researcher and anti-settlement activist, said Palestinians are right to be worried, given the pace of settlement expansion during Trump’s presidency and the makeup of the current Israeli government.
The government, elected two years ago, is the most right-wing in Israel’s history and includes extremist settler figures in its cabinet.
“I think they are going to annex a very large part of the West Bank,” Etkes said. “Where are they (Israeli settlements) today, and where do Israelis want to be in the future?”
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan in 1967. The Israeli government subsequently allowed Jewish settlements to expand and prosper in Palestinian lands.
The settlements are widely considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes them.
City Hall | Even Israel considers settlement outposts illegal. At least technically:
video-item-title">One Hill at a Time: How Israeli Settlers Take More Territory
CBC News senior international correspondent Margaret Evans explains the strategies used by Israeli settlers to claim more land in the West Bank.
Today there are half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank alone, some living in large settlements and others in small remote areas or “outposts.” Some settlers live there for economic reasons, while others live there because they believe they have a sacred right to the land.
Violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers has been increasing in recent years, with a further surge following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
“It’s vicious,” Etkes said, describing a well-organized and well-funded campaign specifically targeting Palestinian pastoral communities. This is the word,” he said.
“We target one community after another. If you remove one community, you move on to the next community. And then we move on to the next community.”
Last year, Israeli settlers carried out more than 1,400 attacks against Palestinians, many of which have become increasingly violent, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Mohammad Hureini, a 20-year-old Palestinian activist from the village of At-Tuwani, told CBC in a September interview at his home that his father makes sure he is never alone when grazing his animals.
Mohammad Hureini looks across the occupied West Bank. Hureini said there were more attacks on people herding animals or working on the land. As a result, he tries to ensure that his father is not alone while grazing the animals. (Jason Ho/CBC)
“I was really afraid of meeting the settlers during the last period,” he said. “People are getting more and more crazy.”
At-Tuwani lies south of Hebron, in the shadow of Ma’on, a notorious settlement of extremists living there and in nearby outposts.
For nearly two decades, Palestinian children have been escorted by Israeli troops while going to school.
Hureini said At-Tuwani residents are being harassed almost every day. “It becomes a crime to water a tree. Cultivating the land becomes a crime,” he said.
He said his father is accompanied by him or one of his brothers, an Israeli and international “Solidarity” volunteer, when he is with his herd or tending their land.
City Hall | ‘Denyed to defend themselves as human beings’:
video-item-title">What is it like living in the shadow of an Israeli settlement?
Palestinian activist Mohammad Hureini explains how Israel treats settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank differently.
Huraini’s cousin was shot in the stomach by settlers just days after the violence began in October 2023. Video of the incident shows the armed settler opening fire and his cousin falling to the ground, while an armed figure in military uniform looks on.
Zakaria Adra survived, but her attacker was not charged. It is unclear whether the man in military uniform is a soldier or not.
This is a growing problem in the West Bank, according to observers who say it is difficult to distinguish between the Israel Defense Forces and the “community defense forces” trained and equipped by the IDF.
The number of local defense forces has increased since October 2023. They are often made up of hard-line settlers who are typically stationed in the West Bank but have volunteered as reserve forces to replace Israeli troops currently fighting in Gaza or Lebanon.
Critics call them militias.
Who are the soldiers and who are the settlers?
Hagit Ofran, head of settlement monitoring at the Israeli organization Peace Now, said the vague boundaries were very problematic.
“The way settlers and soldiers work together, and the fact that you don’t know if the person in front of you is a settler and soldier who are currently in reserve, or a settler who happens to be wearing a military uniform, I put it in my closet and I’m wearing it now.”
CBC News reporters experienced this phenomenon firsthand when they filmed an interview with Huraini outside his home last September.
An armed man in military uniform but without any identifying insignia approached us in a buggy-like vehicle from the direction of the settlement outpost and demanded our passports.
He refused to show identification or accept a press card issued by the Israeli government in lieu of a passport. Soon, more armed men in military uniform arrived.
City Hall | Palestinians say settlers’ tactics are becoming increasingly hardline.
video-item-title">We visited a Palestinian village and Israeli settlers showed up.
Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank say the tactics of Israeli settlers have become more extreme in the past few years. Margaret Evans and the CBC News team visited South Hebron Hills to better understand what it’s like to live in the shadow of these illegal settlements. “
Hureini handed over his identity card and said he knew “settler soldiers” who regularly harassed At-Tuwani residents.
A standoff ensued in which a Palestinian-Israeli colleague of ours was detained by armed men and dragged into a vehicle.
He was driven in the direction of the settlement and eventually released to the side of the road where our crew was able to collect him. He was ordered to report to the police station the next day and was not allowed to return to the area for two weeks.
It was a mild taste that many Palestinians face every day.
Asked to comment on the incident, the IDF said the man asking for the passport was an army reservist and qualified to do so.
“The new phenomenon of local defense units has made the intensity of harassment and the distances that troops keep Palestinians from their lands much greater,” said Ophran of Peace Now.
She said hundreds of Palestinian families have fled settler violence over the past year.
‘You’re always afraid’
Residents of Zanuta, a pastoral village south of At-Tuwani, fled en masse in October 2023. This summer, an order from Israel’s Supreme Court allowed them to return.
But when they tried to return home last September, they found their homes, the parliament building built with European Union funding, and their school all destroyed.
Residents of the Palestinian village of Zanuta faced regular threats from aggressive Israeli settlers and eventually fled for safety. Zanuta’s schools and much of the village were destroyed. (Jason Ho/CBC)
An Israeli court order states that military and police protection is provided, but residents say they have not received it.
“You are always afraid,” Shafik Suleiman, a 52-year-old shepherd, said in September, adding that the settlers soon returned to harass them. “If you had come an hour ago, you would have seen the settlers here.”
He showed a video of a man driving a quad through animals. He said the man was Inon Levi, the head of an outpost called Meitarim Farm, located just across the Zanuta Valley.
Levy is one of 11 extremist settlers sanctioned by Canada for inciting and committing violence against Palestinians and their property.
An outpost is a small settlement, usually consisting of one or two structures or tents. They are used by hardliners as a base to expand their control over more land.
Even Israel considers the outposts illegal, at least technically.
Palestinians and settlement watchdog groups say that despite its own laws, the current Israeli government supports them extensively and will one day connect them to infrastructure, including electricity and water.
Over the past year, about 70 outposts have been given the green light for government funding, a way to “regularize” them, according to the settlement watchdog group. Meanwhile, 43 new outposts were established.
Shafik Suleiman tends to his flock in Zanuta. He returned to his village to resume his life despite constant threats from Israeli settlers. (Jason Ho/CBC)
Eventually, Zanuta residents gave up trying to repopulate their village. Despite the court’s order to return, no permission was given to rebuild the damaged building.
With the ongoing threat from Meitarim farms, the Zanuta market said it was no longer sustainable.
“Unfortunately, the settlers are still attacking us,” Fayez Tell said. The October 7 attack and the subsequent war in Gaza provided cover for the Israelis, who decided to annex the West Bank, he added.
“The settlers were given permission to do whatever they wanted,” he said.
Back in At-Tuwani, Hureini said the path he had chosen was still one of non-violent resistance to the dispossession of Palestinian lands.
“I’m still under the same umbrella, but I rule as a man with a gun,” he said. “Because this job doesn’t care if you have a gun or not. You are the same target.
“We have no power in our hands except to stand on the ground, on the ground, and show them that we are still not going to get out of here.”
