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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/settlers-deliver-states-final-blow">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Settlers deliver the state's final blow</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span> -
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">14 August 2023</span></span> </p>
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<span><img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2023-08/010823_hebron_mw_00_35.jpg?itok=HLWyTuiJ×tamp=1692054460" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="410" height="273" style="margin-right: 25px;"></span><p><font size="1">Israeli
soldiers scuffle with Palestinians protesting settlers who set up tents
on their land in Halhul village near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, 1
August.</font></p><font size="1">
<span>APA images</span></font><p>“I’m the
government, I’m the state. I’m the police and the military,” an armed
Jewish settler asserted while occupying the home of a Palestinian sheep
herder earlier this month.</p>
<p>The settler’s claim, however repugnant, reflects the truth: The
settlers and the state are one, working hand in hand to colonize
Palestinian land.</p>
<p>The state cannot advance its goal of full control between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean Sea without the settlers terrorizing
Palestinians until they flee their land.</p>
<p>Days after the aforementioned armed settler walked into Muhammad
Hassan Abu al-Kabash’s home, the herding community dismantled their
encampment in al-Qabun, northeast of Ramallah, the seat of the
Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>A dozen families lived in al-Qabun for more than two decades before
settlers arrived in February “and started making trouble for us,” Abu
al-Kabash said.
</p>
Settlers subjected the pastoral community to months of harassment by
“walking around their homes, arriving on horseback and in tractors late
at night to provoke and intimidate the families,” <a href="https://www.btselem.org/press_release/20230810_killings_pogroms_expulsion_israel_dispossesses_palestinians_of_their_lands_using_settler_violence">according to</a> B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.
<p>“The settlers have also taken over the community’s farm fields and
prevented them from grazing their flock on their land,” B’Tselem added.</p>
<h2>Forced to leave</h2>
<p>Unable to work and fearing for their safety, the community was forced
to leave their land, as have several other rural communities in the
West Bank in recent months.</p>
<p>Dozens more herding communities are “directly affected by an increase
in Israeli settler violence and measures taken by Israeli authorities,”
<a href="https://ochaopt.org/content/ras-al-tin-s-remaining-89-residents-leave-amid-increasing-settler-violence">according to</a> the UN monitoring group OCHA.</p>
<p>“In the first six months of 2023, the UN recorded 591 settler-related
incidents resulting in Palestinian casualties, property damage, or
both,” OCHA stated.</p>
<p>“This is a 39 percent increase in the monthly average when compared
with 2022, during which the highest number of settler-related incidents
since the UN began recording such data in 2006 was reported.”
</p>
The displacement of communities due to a coercive environment amounts to
forcible transfer – “a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and
thus a war crime,” <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/masafer-yatta-communities-risk-forcible-transfer-june-2022">according to</a> OCHA.
<p>B’Tselem states that Israeli policies “force impossible conditions on
local residents in order to push them to leave, thus clearing the way
for it to take over their lands and transfer them to Jewish hands.”</p>
<p>Banning Palestinians from building homes and infrastructure, while
permitting and financing settlements whose residents attack
Palestinians, are policies “aimed at upholding, preserving and
empowering Jewish supremacy,” B’Tselem adds.</p>
<h2>Settler violence surges</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of the year, nearly 500 Palestinians – more than
half of them children – have been forcibly transferred due to settler
violence and lack of access to grazing land, according to OCHA.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the first six months of 2023, Israel advanced the
approval of nearly 13,000 settlement units in the West Bank – “the
highest year on record,” the settlement watchdog Peace Now <a href="https://peacenow.org.il/en/a-record-number-of-housing-units-were-promoted-in-the-west-bank-in-only-six-months">said</a> in July.</p>
<p>It’s no coincidence that it’s the highest year on record for both the
advancement of settlement units and settler attacks against
Palestinians and their property.</p>
<p>Some of those attacks have been deadly.</p>
<p>The current Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has
ramped up the structural violence necessary for the creation and
maintenance of a Jewish state in Palestine.</p>
<p>The guiding principles of the government <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/how-will-icc-respond-netanyahus-threats">begin with</a> the assertion that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right over all areas of the land of Israel.”</p>
<p>It’s the natural evolution of a state of impunity that allowed for
rampant colonization of West Bank land, in clear violation of
international law, after the signing of the Oslo accords by Israel and
the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s.</p>
<p>In the years that followed, the pretense of the so-called peace
process gave Israel cover to consolidate its control and make permanent
its military occupation under the guise of temporary security measures.</p>
<p>Previous Israeli governments made efforts to maintain the impression
that the state was somehow separate from the settlement enterprise in
occupied Palestinian and Syrian land when in reality, nearly <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/why-israel-isnt-different-settlements">every facet of the state</a>, including the currently embattled judiciary, is implicated in the colonization project.</p>
<h2>Defenseless</h2>
<p>The present government, by contrast, is transparent about its
maximalist designs on Palestinian land, and its endorsement of the
violence by <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/after-settler-pogroms-even-worse-genocidal-violence-come">both settlers and the state</a>
required to fulfill Israel’s “great purpose,” in the words of Kahanist
national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir: “The land of Israel for the
people of Israel.”</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Ben-Gvir <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ben-gvir-praises-settlers-who-killed-teen-heroes">praised as “heroes”</a> settlers suspected of killing Qusai Jamal Mutan in Burqa, a town near Ramallah, painting the act of violence as <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-06/ty-article/.premium/israeli-coalition-cabinet-have-not-condemned-the-killing-of-a-palestinian-by-settlers/00000189-c74a-ddac-a3cd-e77b9b5d0000">self-defense</a>.</p>
<p>Palestinians, meanwhile, are <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-11/ty-article/.premium/israel-prevents-palestinians-from-defending-themselves-as-it-empowers-the-settlers/00000189-e0f6-d9cf-a7eb-fbff3f9c0000">not allowed to defend themselves</a> from the attacks by settlers like those celebrated by Ben-Gvir, who provoke and harass under the guard of the military.</p>
<p>As the Israeli journalist Amira Hass explains, “Palestinians are not
allowed to use weapons to defend themselves, or stones or sticks, and
they’re also not permitted to rush to the defense of others.”</p>
<p>The ban is imposed and enforced by the military “amid an atmosphere
of Jewish supremacy … a complex matrix in which every component is
linked to another and holds it in place,” Hass states.</p>
<p>Palestinians like the shepherds in al-Qabun know that there is little
to protect them from the settlers and the state, working together to
rob them of their land and way of life.</p>
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