In the NEW YORK TIMES guest essay transmitted below, my distinguished recipient Mairav Zonszein explains that the settler militias terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank are "not isolated extremists or hooligans" but, rather, Israeli government agents carrying out Israeli government policies "to intimidate, harrass and make Palestinian life in the West Bank unbearable" as part of "a greater national project that is largely uncontested in Israel."
In view of this reality, it is pathetically inadequate for Western governments to merely sanction individual illegal settlers and particularly egregious politicians and to agonize over whether to require products produced in illegal settlements to be so identified when sold in their countries or banned from sale in their countries.
If Western governments are to have any hope of preserving any pretense of any genuine concern for human rights or international law, they must sanction the State of Israel itself and ban the sale of any of its products in their countries so as to, as Mairav writes, "compel Israel to dismantle the settlement enterprise as a whole."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/opinion/israel-west-bank-settlers-violence.html
It’s Not Just the West Bank Settlers. It’s Israel.
By Mairav Zonszein
Ms. Zonszein, a contributing Opinion writer, wrote from Tel Aviv.
Of all the fronts on which Israel is exerting force, the West Bank is where the Jewish state is the most invested, exerts the most control and has received the least American pushback. It is also where over half a million Israeli citizens live among some three million Palestinians who are under military occupation without citizenship. President Trump has not put any brakes on Israeli settlement expansion, creeping annexation, military raids, demolitions of Palestinian homes or settler attacks — all of which have reached record numbers under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The West Bank is far more strategically and ideologically vital to Israel than any war it is fighting, and it is the area in which Israel has the most longstanding, coherent and unchallenged goal: as much land for Jews with as few Palestinians as possible. The West Bank is also the only arena in which Jewish settler militia groups are operating like a paramilitary force to advance Israel’s goals.
These
militias are not rogue entities, as Israeli
leaders have proclaimed. They are organized groups
of civilians made up of a combination of Israeli
settlers who establish new settlement outposts
across the West Bank, settlers who were called up
for reserve duty since the Hamas attacks of Oct.
7, 2023, and serve in regional defense units, and
rapid response squads, which are local volunteer
emergency teams tasked with providing first
response in their settlements. Imagine a
neighborhood watch, but with military-grade
weapons and the use of deadly force. In June, a United Nations report found that
“financial and military support” from Israeli authorities
had “enabled settler attacks.”
On Aug. 9, one such militia began to terrorize three Palestinian families in the village of Qusra. They set up a tent outside their home, cutting off access to electricity and water and stymying their freedom of movement.
In this case, one of the homes is owned by Loui Ridi, a Palestinian with American citizenship from Ohio. He traveled back to Qusra, putting up an American flag on the roof of his house. Israeli forces had declared the area a “closed military zone” and removed the tent settlers had erected, but did not restore the Palestinian residents’ ability to move in and out freely. Settlers still roamed around, in violation of the order, while the Israeli Army effectively replaced the settlers in surrounding the homes.
“Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting,” the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said in a statement on X. Mr. Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog have also condemned these attacks. But the settler militias terrorizing Qusra and other villages across the West Bank could not continue to act as they are without state and military cover. These are not isolated extremists or hooligans, as Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Netanyahu and other leaders have said.
Nor is this simply settler violence. In the West Bank, Palestinians live in daily fear for their lives. Mr. Ridi is not the only homeowner at risk. Even as the U.S. flag waved over his home, there was another settler attack against a different Palestinian home in Qusra on Aug. 29. Israeli settlers arrived in white pickup trucks, their faces masked, throwing stones. Despite a statement by Mr. Netanyahu condemning the act and assuring that authorities would take action, there has been only one reported arrest related to the attacks in Qusra and a handful of arrests related to other settler-based violence in the area. These moves may not result in much: Even when arrests are made, only 3 percent of settlers are convicted.
In other words, what’s happened in Qusra is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy, which has expanded and deepened its control over the occupied territory over the last four years. This has been accomplished through intensifying economic strangulation, restrictions on freedom of movement, transferring governing powers from military to civilian control and, most egregiously, the emboldening of settler militias. Such groups already existed when the current government was formed in late 2022. But in the past three years, these militias have been largely given free rein to intimidate, harass and make Palestinian life in the West Bank unbearable. Since 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been displaced by a combination of settler attacks, military operations and restrictions on access and movement. On Sept. 2, Israeli forces demolished homes and structures in the Palestinian village of Khirbet al Tabban in the southern West Bank, rendering the village’s 70 residents homeless.
The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the deadliest single attack on Israelis in the country’s history, accelerated the use of violence in general, and settler militias in particular, under the most pro-settler, far-right government in Israeli history. Under this government, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has expedited the destruction of Palestinian homes while streamlining the building of Israeli ones, whereas Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, has distributed arms to Israelis by easing regulations for licenses, adding around 7,000 firearms to settlers. This has further blurred the line between civilian and soldier, enabling armed settlers to act with a sense of authority whether wearing a uniform or not, most acting without any command structure and with a sense of entitlement — and impunity.
The phenomenon of settlement expansion and terror did not begin with the current Israeli government and, in all likelihood, will not end with it. Settler militias clearly act with state backing in the service of a greater national project that is largely uncontested in Israel: Israel’s permanent control over much of the West Bank. A recent poll found that 55 percent of Israeli Jews want to keep settlements in any future agreement with the Palestinians, while 38 percent support annexation of the West Bank.
While any reduction in settler violence is a welcome and necessary step, to end the systematic destruction of Palestinian life and truly facilitate Palestinian self-determination, external pressure from countries around the world will be necessary. First, the international community must insist that the next Israeli government put an end to settler militias. It must then compel Israel to dismantle the settlement enterprise as a whole.