Tackling Violent Settlers in the Occupied West Bank Together

Like every morning, there was tension.

It crackled in the air like static electricity. There was so much going on lately that only a fool would venture into the hills without being careful.

The sun was already high, and it pulsed heat through the stillness of the earth. The sound of animal bells could be heard, men and boys whistling to call the dogs.

High on the hill opposite was the Jewish settlement of Rotem. Nearby was an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outpost. There to protect the settlers.

Anyone looking down from above would see people gathered around Ahmad Daraghme’s house: the Palestinian pastor, the Israeli activists who support him, the foreign journalists with their cameras.

Chatting with Ahmad was a 71-year-old Jew who regularly accompanies the pastor into the hills, despite the violence and harassment.

A man who, I have a feeling, will not back down from any fight he believes is right. “When I am convinced that my positions are true, I am ready to fight for my beliefs. Call it stubbornness? That’s fine,” says Gil Alexander.

He belongs to the Jordan Valley Activists, a group of Israelis committed to protecting Palestinians. They accompany shepherds to and from their pastures.

Perhaps settlers would have shown up near al-Farisiyah this morning, perhaps not. The harassment has been more frequent since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping 251.

Settler violence, which had been ongoing for years in the West Bank, was rapidly escalating, with the aim, according to Palestinians, of driving them off their land.

According to OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there have been Over 1,000 settler attacks against Palestinians since Octoberwith at least 1,390 people, including 660 children, displaced.

The attacks were often accompanied by lethal violence. OCHA recorded 107 attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties and injuries, of which 859 caused damage to Palestinian property.

Thousands of Palestinian-owned trees and saplings have been destroyed. Farmers like Ahmad describe how access to water for their families, crops and herds is regularly blocked or restricted.

International attention has focused on Gaza, but the scale of settler violence has prompted the United States, the European Union and Britain to impose sanctions on some settler leaders and, for the first time, against entire outposts of settlers.

Jordan Valley activists understand that the important thing is to stay calm. No matter how much provocation there is.

Gil Alexander knows what the settlers are capable of, even when there is no resistance. He has the scars to prove it. But this morning he is optimistic.

“A day like this,” he says, “makes me feel good. If we can prevent attacks, that gives me satisfaction.”

Gil has become good friends with Ahmad Daraghme, who has been repeatedly harassed. Ahmad accuses the Israeli military and police of siding with the settlers, a claim supported by numerous accounts by Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists.

Pointing to the hills around him, all the way to the main road, Ahmad says, “The problem is… all this land is forbidden to us. This hill is forbidden, everything is forbidden. This situation is a disaster: it doesn’t matter if we have permission or not, they always create problems for us.”

We climbed over hills, over rocks and ravines, until a valley opened up beneath us. The earth was auburn brown, covered with dry stalks of freshly cut corn, good fodder for hungry sheep.

Ahmad rode ahead of us on his donkey, leading the flock to pasture, as his ancestors had done for generations.

A mountain deer darted into the heat haze and disappeared. The image was of a pastoral Eden. In reality it is a fierce battlefield.

Last December, Gil Alexander and another activist were with Ahmad when settlers attacked at night. They were savagely beaten and pepper-sprayed.

In another incident in the valley, Gil collapsed while trying to stop a settler from dispersing a Palestinian herd.

He has faced constant threats. The fact that he is a devout religious Jew infuriates the settlers, who believe that the West Bank, the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria, belong to the Jewish people.

Gil is the son of French Jews and emigrated to Israel when he was 20. His father fought in the French Resistance against the Nazis. “I feel like a representative of a humanitarian religious Judaism,” Gil says. “There are few of them in Israel today.”

Palestinians like Ahmad Daraghme have been living under occupation since Israel captured the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Since then, over 160 settlements have been built in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, with approximately 700,000 Jewish residents. There are approximately three million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

For Gil Alexander, who calls himself a Zionist, Israeli territory should end at the 1967 borders. Any settlement in the West Bank should only exist with Palestinian consent.

“We can love this land without being its owners, its sole owners… In order not to constantly keep the local population under control by force, we should give up a part of this land, in the hope of being able to get there freely later.”

Gil says that only this can avoid “the national religious conflict that has existed for 100 years, since Zionism existed, between the Palestinian and Jewish populations.”

While Gil believes that “nothing is impossible,” such an idea seems far-fetched in the current harsh political situation.

Israel now has the most right-wing government in its history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the support of pro-settler parties for the survival of his ruling coalition.

Recently, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke of “mega-strategic” measures to expand settlement activity with government funding.

Three weeks ago, the government declared nearly 3,000 acres in the Jordan Valley “state land,” the largest such expansion in three decades.

This declaration adds to a similar declaration of nearly 2,000 acres in the same area made in March.

The supreme court of the United Nations – the International Court of Justice – described the Israeli occupation as “de facto annexation” and in violation of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which condemns “racial segregation and apartheid”.

Ahmad Daraghme knows how things work on the pitch.

Speaking of his old pastures, he says: “All these areas, all these places, we are not allowed to go to them. Some have been planted with olive trees. Some have become restricted areas… They want us to leave this area. They want to stay here. They don’t want us to stay here.”

The political impulse is in favor of the settlers.

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, recently voted 68 to 9 to reject a Palestinian state in the West Bank, as it “would pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and destabilize the region.”

Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Israeli security control over the West Bank is essential to the country’s security.

For someone like Shai Rosengarten, people like the Jordan Valley activists are “radicals” who should stay away from the West Bank.

He says that “the settlements in Israel are very important, because we think that in Israel we need to reconnect with our tradition.”

Coincidentally, like Gil, he is also descended from Holocaust survivors.

His grandfather came to Israel from Poland in the years following the war.

Shai is a leading figure in the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu that supports the settlements. The settler violence, he says, is carried out by only a minority. He says the problem is what he calls “radical” human rights activists.

“We see them as radicals. And we see their activity as a disruption of military activity. So this is very bad for the area.”

I asked Shai if he really meant it was bad for the settlers?

“No, I actually mean they’re disrupting military activity. Sure, they’re trying to harass settlers, but they’re also trying to harass soldiers. And we have a lot of examples of this kind of activity happening in front of Israeli soldiers, and they just, you know, put their camera in front of their face.

“And you know, this is very, very damaging and very damaging to the Israeli soldiers who have to focus on what is happening.”

Gil firmly rejects this characterization and argues that he is defending true Jewish values.

He is part of an Israeli minority that currently has little political influence. But standing in the shade of an acacia tree, with Ahmad herding sheep and goats to herd for the night, Gil Alexander insisted there was hope for a peaceful end to a conflict that he said had no military solution.

“We have no choice… War, obviously, will give us nothing. From war to war, we are increasingly weaker… Even our strength has limits.”

With additional contributions from Haneen Abdeen.