Israel's Army Drafted and Armed Thousands of Settlers. Accounts of Their Violence Are Piling Up - Israel News - Haaretz.com
An Israeli settler soldier rides a horse in the southern West Bank, last month.
A week after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza border, Aisha Al-Aza, a 19-year-old Palestinian resident of Hebron, went up to the roof of her home.
A man she recognized appeared across from her – a settler who was her neighbor. But there was something different. He was wearing a military uniform and was armed with an M16 assault rifle. "He swore at me, called me a bitch, and loaded his rifle," she says. "He threw stones at me, too." Al-Aza says the neighbor continued to hurl stones after she came down from the roof.
About a month ago, on her way home from a military checkpoint, she met another settler who lives near her, also in uniform. He ordered her to show him her ID card and then her phone. She refused to hand over her phone, and he threatened to detain her. "As soldiers, the settlers are much harsher than the ordinary soldiers," she says. "Now they're in charge here."
Al-Aza's uniformed neighbors are only two out of thousands of settlers drafted into the reserves when the war broke out. About 5,500 residents of the settlements have been drafted into the ranks of "regional defense" battalions to serve in their settlements and near neighboring Palestinian villages. Their mobilization has expanded the ranks of the regional defense battalions fivefold – district-level units that are mainly composed of local residents, in this case settlers, who serve near their homes.
About 7,000 people are serving in the battalions, according to a military source. They include members of the settlements' local security squads drafted in an emergency call-up. Alongside this large-scale mobilization, the IDF has distributed some 7,000 weapons to the battalions as well as to settlers who were not recruited into the army but received them as civilians whom the army considers eligible to carry military arms.
The military says this extensive mobilization is necessary to guard the settlements after the redeployment of regular forces from the West Bank to the south and the north of Israel. It doesn't deny that the settlers were mobilized in a sped-up process.
While the military seems to have little concern about the accelerated process, at least one settler who was drafted and given a gun previously admitted, in the context of a plea bargain, to assaulting a Palestinian and a left-wing activist. In another case, a military weapon was given to a settler who had admitted in a plea bargain to theft and to attacking Palestinians.
In addition to these examples, settlers who are well-known to Palestinians and left-wing activists have also been drafted. Since these settlers started doing reserve duty in the West Bank, video and firsthand accounts have accumulated of their active involvement in violence, threats, and destruction of Palestinian property. In some cases, the IDF reacted by dismissing them or confiscating their weapons. Sometimes, it just said it has "tightened regulations."
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"In the past, if we saw a settler who was mobilized to serve in the military here, and he lived near us, we would complain and they would move them," says Issa Amro, an activist from Hebron. Amro told Haaretz that on the first day of the war, he was detained by soldiers he recognized as settlers who lived near him. He says they handcuffed him tightly, blindfolded him, beat him, and threatened him for around 10 hours.
"I thought they would kill me," he says. "It was the worst experience of my life. I can deal with soldiers, even if they're fanatics. But settlers in uniform are impossible." The IDF spokesman said the claims will be checked.
24 hours to demolish the house
Ordinarily, the regional defense battalions in the settlements oversee what is defined as "the settlement's security zone," a vague term that is implemented differently from place to place. Since the units' ranks have been expanded, however, it seems that their problematic conduct has been on the rise.
On the afternoon of October 16, for example, soldiers from a regional defense battalion and a well-known settler entered the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susya with a bulldozer. The Palestinians recognized the driver of the bulldozer as a settler from a nearby outpost. According to their accounts, the soldiers and settlers demolished structures and infrastructure, destroyed crops, and blocked the roads allowing access to Khirbet Susya while preventing residents from leaving their homes.
When they finally left, the residents discovered that three water cisterns, water pipes, and a building had been destroyed. They also found that a cave used by the community and access roads had been blocked off, and olive trees and grapevines had been uprooted.
Attorney Quamar Mishirqi of the Israeli human rights NGO Haqel immediately asked the Civil Administration, Israel's governing body in the West Bank, whether there had been any order to demolish structures in the village – and was told there wasn't. Later, the IDF admitted that the force had gone beyond its mission and said that the incident was being investigated. Recently, the IDF added that, following the case, it had "clarified the regulations" to the soldiers involved and that no further steps were taken.
About two weeks later, another incident occurred in the village. According to resident Ahmed Jaber, on the night of October 28 soldiers, some of them masked, came to his house. They roused him and his family and scared his daughters, aged 7 and 8. Then, he says, they removed him from the house and beat him.
"He [the soldier] said to me: 'You have 24 hours in which you have to demolish your house by yourself,'" he says. "If I come here and see the house as it is, I'll shoot you."
Jaber says that the soldiers arrived in two white, non-military cars. He was wounded in the head and back during the assault, he says, but wasn't sent to a hospital because the roads in the area were blocked. In response to a query by Haaretz, the IDF Spokesman's Office said it wasn't familiar with the details. Haaretz was not able to confirm if those involved in the incident were from the regional defense battalions, civilians pretending to be soldiers, or rank-and-file soldiers.
Ultimately, Jaber didn't flee, in part because after the incident, activists started sleeping in his home to help protect it. In that sense, he's relatively lucky. According to figures from the B'Tselem human rights group, since the start of the war in October, the residents of 16 villages in Area C– the part of the West Bank where Israel has full military and civilian control – have fled because of violence and threats from both settlers and soldiers.
Although the active involvement of soldiers in this type of activity is considered highly unusual, several such incidents have already been cited in a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Mishirqi in November, demanding that the army protect Palestinian communities.
The assaults mentioned in the petition took place in the South Hebron Hills area, including the villages of Wadi Jahish, Sha'ab al-Butum, and Tagh'la. The petition noted that in several cases, the Palestinians identified the soldiers as settlers from the area.
The South Hebron Hills sector, which is under the command of Judea Brigade commander Col. Yishai Rosilio, came up repeatedly in conversations about irregular conduct by soldiers and the regional defense battalions since the war began. Military sources confirm this, and a source in the defense establishment placed personal responsibility on the commander, claiming he had failed to take sufficient action against the regional defense soldiers involved in these acts.
Several of those drafted into the ranks of the regional battalions in this area are settlers who are familiar to their Palestinian neighbors, including Yitzhak Feld of the unauthorized outpost of Mitzpe Yair in the Hebron area, who in 2020 confessed to the details in indictments that charged him with the assault of a left-wing activist and two Palestinians in two separate incidents.
As part of the plea deal, Feld was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, a two-month suspended sentence for two years, and compensation of 500 shekels (about $150 in 2020) to each of the complainants. Nevertheless, he was drafted to a regional defense battalion after the outbreak of the war. In response to a query, the military said his continued service is being examined. Feld refused to respond.
Avia Weinstock, who lives in an unauthorized farm in what's defined as IDF Firing Zone 918, has also been drafted into the battalion. The region, which is also known as Masafer Yatta, was declared a firing zone in the 1980s. It covers an area of about 30,000 dunams (7,400 acres) in the South Hebron Hills and is inhabited by Palestinians whose expulsion was approved by the High Court in a 2022 ruling.
In late October, a video starring Weinstock was posted on YouTube in which he wears an army uniform and carries an IDF weapon. In April, he confessed in a plea bargain to theft, assault, giving false information, and purchasing weapons parts or ammunition. The conviction was over a 2022 incident in which a horse belonging to Palestinians was stolen from Hebron, according to the indictment.
In the video, Weinstock told the viewers that he needed about $20,000 to purchase security measures for the outpost. The military said that Weinstock was drafted to the regional defense battalion but served for only one day before being discharged. At the time the video was filmed, said the IDF, he was no longer considered a reservist but rather an armed civilian – someone who had permission to possess a military weapon. Weinstock also refused to respond to a request for comment.
The phenomenon that began with the expansion of the ranks of the regional defense battalion has not escaped the IDF's notice. According to a defense source, after several weeks, the decision was made to restrict the battalions' area of activity to the settlements alone. Any activity outside of them requires approval from a brigade commander, at least officially.
This has not been followed. On November 12, for example, two soldiers from the South Hebron Hills defense battalion entered a school in the village of Al-Tuwani in an attempt to remove a Palestinian flag. One of the soldiers was filmed telling a Palestinian: I'm in my home, habibi." The Al-Tuwani mayor said that when the soldiers entered the school, frightened students who were in the schoolyard fled from them. The IDF spokesman said at the time that the two had been ousted.
A hearing was held in the beginning of January on the petition filed by Mishirqi and another one on the same issue filed by attorney Netta Amar-Shiff. During the hearing, Col. Roy Zweig, an officer in the Central Command's operations division, noted that 13 investigations had been opened by the Military Police's investigative division regarding the conduct of reservists in the West Bank.
According to the IDF Spokesman's Office, two of these investigations are into soldiers in the regional defense battalions. Zweig added that a platoon commander from an outpost was discharged from service because of a specific incident, the nature of which wasn't mentioned and nor was the name of the outpost. Attorney Roi Shweike of the State Prosecutor's Office said that the military examines the reservists' criminal records and that soldiers aren't supposed to conceal their faces (a phenomenon well-documented in recent months) unless they have received prior approval.
On December 8, the South Hebron Hills regional defense battalion took part in an activity pre-approved by Rosilio, the brigade commander: a raid in the Palestinian village of Khalat al-Daba. Participating in the raid were 21 soldiers from the battalion – from the settlements and outposts of Susya, Mitzpe Yair, Yatir, Shani Livnah, Asa'el, and Havat Ma'on – along with eight ordinary reservists. The purpose of the raid was to gather intelligence and search for weapons. Several of the soldiers entered the village in a civilian all-terrain vehicle and others in white vans.
In a conversation with Haaretz, village residents say the raid was violent. According to their accounts, the soldiers trashed their houses and heavily damaged their property, including TVs and solar panels. At the end of the raid, they say, they discovered that about 10,000 shekels ($2,700) and 5,000 Jordanian dinars ($7,000) in cash, a dozen bars of gold, and agricultural equipment had been looted. The IDF initially denied that money or agricultural equipment had been taken from the residents but later said that the claims were being checked.
"It was clear from their clothing that they weren't exactly soldiers," says Jaber Dababseh, one of the village residents. He says some of them looked disheveled, and he thought they were settlers. Others looked like ordinary soldiers to him. He says that the dynamic between the two groups of soldiers was strange and that one of the officers tried to talk to the settler soldier, "and he simply didn't answer." He said that that same settler soldier hit and kicked him. Later, he says, he recognized his picture: a settler who lives in the area.
During the raid, another resident, Salah Dababseh, was detained after the soldiers claimed they had found bullets inside a schoolbag in his house. (The IDF spokesman showed Haaretz a photo of a bag with bullets in it.)
Dababseh says the ammunition was planted there. In a step that is highly irregular for cases of a Palestinian being detained on suspicion of possessing ammunition, Dababseh was released from the police station that same day. On the way, he says, a soldier beat him until his face was bleeding, and a soldier put out a cigarette on him – a claim that's supported by marks on his body even three days later.
The unusual activity of settlers in the regional defense battalions isn't limited to the South Hebron Hills. One witness to that is Yousef Bisharat, who has been grazing his sheep in the northern Jordan Valley for the past 20 years.
In recent years, he says, Uri Cohen, a resident of the nearby farm outpost named Hahava shel Uri (Uri's farm) has tried to chase him away whenever he comes to graze his herd there. But on November 27, says Bisharat, an escalation began. First, Cohen arrived at the shepherd's home in the village of Khalat Makhoul. He was wearing a uniform and armed with an M16 rifle. Bisharat filmed Cohen saying that it was "his territory."
"You won't enter with your herds," he says in the video. "If you go there, you'll have problems, you and your children."
"The army is helping him now, the police are helping him, everyone is helping him," says Bisharat. The IDF says that Cohen, who was drafted to the battalion, acted against the army's orders and exceeded his authority, adding that regulations have been tightened. Cohen refused to respond to a request for comment.
Another case in the Jordan Valley ended with the suspension of a reservist in late November. Zohar Sabah, who also lives in a farm outpost in the Jordan Valley, entered the nearby Palestinian village of Ma'arajat, claiming that its residents had stolen sheep from him. He fired his weapon, and the residents claim he also entered homes in the village. He was filmed there alongside a settler holding a cudgel and a few other settlers, including one who had beaten a Palestinian with a military weapon. The IDF said that the event was reported to the police and that Sabah's gun was taken from him.
But Sabah's military weapon was in his possession long before the war – even though he was known among the villagers as someone who regularly entered their village and was previously filmed setting up a checkpoint on a nearby road while armed, without permission from the military.
As far as the IDF is concerned, he was entitled to a weapon because he lives in a farm outpost in an area the military considers to be dangerous. The fact that the outpost is illegal under Israeli law changed nothing. Effectively, regulations for distributing weapons allow almost every settler to have them on the condition that they receive a recommendation from the security coordinator of their settlement, undergo training, and are approved by the defense authorities, including the Shin Bet security service. Sabah didn't respond to a request for comment.
Other irregular incidents that were registered in recent months included the involvement of soldiers who didn't necessarily belong to a regional defense battalion. In one example, a soldier who was filmed throwing stones at a Palestinian family near the settlement of Negohot in the Hebron area. In another case, in late October, also in the South Hebron Hills, masked soldiers entered Umm al-Khair and seized the residents' phones. Later, according to the residents, the village's men were assembled at a single spot and filmed while ordered to condemn Hamas – and the soldiers threatened that they would suffer if they didn't fly an Israeli flag.
"We suspect that it isn't the regular military but settlers in the reserves," says one of the residents, who requested to remain anonymous. "What they did wasn't normal."
In response to a question about Palestinian complaints after the events in Halat al-Daba, Susya, Sha'ab al-Butum, and Ma'arjat, the police said that when it became apparent that soldiers were involved, the investigative material was handed over to the Military Police.
The IDF said in response to a request for comment: "Since the start of the war, two Military Police investigations have been opened regarding suspicion of a criminal offense committed by the soldiers of the regional defense battalion in the area of the Central Command." The army also said that regarding the process of mobilizing the battalion soldiers, there was "as fast an examination process as possible for each case, and the decisions to mobilize were made based on the individual circumstances. As soon as there is additional information that wasn't in the hands of the deciding entity at the time of the mobilization, the issue is re-examined and the decision is made accordingly."
The IDF said in response to the Umm al-Khair incident, that the soldiers had entered the village after hearing "shouts in the area" and looking for the residents' phones, they found pictures and videos inciting violence on them. The military said it wasn't familiar with the allegations of threats.
It also said that "the commander of the Judea Brigade is an ethical and professional officer. Exceptional cases in Judea and Samaria, and in the Judea Brigade in particular, are subject to an immediate and thorough examination, and are handled according to the circumstances."