How Israel uses military insurgents to control the West Bank | Taken from the West Bank

The violent incidents that have been taking place in the West Bank over the past few days are well known. Settlers are burning houses and places of worship, Palestinian villages are being brutally tortured, families are being forced to leave their homes at gunpoint with all they can carry, and Israeli soldiers are carrying out deadly attacks.

The latest violence was the result of a fierce battle that took place in the village of Tal in the northern West Bank, where Israeli residents who attacked the community were confronted by Palestinian men. Two guests died.

Later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to increase military operations in the West Bank to achieve “criminals“When the Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is now a necessary and important step for the security of Israel.

Listening to Israeli officials, one would think that Israel’s military operations and settlements in the West Bank are an act. But they are not. It’s a way – a way to promote colonialism.

List of regular-soldiers

For many years, the presence of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank was justified by the presence of Israeli settlers. Perhaps this may have been true in the past, but in the last five years, the difference between a soldier and an Israeli civilian settled in the land has narrowed because one wears a uniform and has the chain of command while the other wears jeans and can shoot at random.

There may be a slight difference between the two, but each plays a role in the important sequence.

First, the Israeli military weakens the Palestinian people through military raids that sweep villages and towns, destroying infrastructure, arresting, torturing and killing Palestinians. Then, the introduction of colonialism increases and finally the administrative unit of the government coordinates the resettlement of the territories.

This is what happened in Jenin. The Israeli army launched several deadly attacks in the city and a refugee camp, the latest “Work Iron Wall” in 2025. Then the visitors to this place arrived.” Today, three new Israeli settlements are being built near the city and another is being built in Tulkarem.

Not only does the Israeli government and security apparatus provide security for Israeli residents, but the opposite is true. For years, Israeli soldiers who have tortured, raped and killed Palestinians have been freed because of the support and coercion of the occupying forces.

This is why referring to Israeli violence in the West Bank as “domestic violence” is an understatement. Settler violence reflects lawlessness outside the state, rather than a well-planned process of occupying illegally occupied land.

The eternal threat of colonialism

For years, Palestinians spoke of the violence of immigrants as a warning of what was to come. Every year for the past decade has set new records for settlement expansion, land confiscation, Israeli violence and the killing of Palestinians.

Every olive harvest was disrupted, every area that grew in the mountains was marked as a slow entry whose consequences were imminent.

Today, that horizon has fallen. The Palestinians live in a constant state of colonial terror, besieged and abandoned. They are expected to live in conditions where women are forced to endure isolation where they are locked up in detention centers, where the army bombs schools, where children do not go to school because immigrants attack their buses. Day by day, the space to live comfortably decreases.

While land is being stolen, Palestinian institutions are treated as objects of Israeli control, openly and repeatedly. Stories of displacement, persecution and humiliation define the daily lives of Palestinians.

Maybe that’s why last week, Foruq Ramadan, a resident of Tal, decided to take a gun from an Israeli immigrant and shoot him.

That moment is important because Israel’s violent response to the West Bank over the weekend was not because Israelis were killed. It was based on the assumption that a Palestinian could disarm an armed Israeli foreigner and shoot him.

In any case, these violent incidents have now been used as yet another opportunity to speed up colonialism. This is why it should not be known as “increase”. It is not a unique phenomenon of settler violence; it is part of the colonial process.

Israel’s hunger for land

What happened in Tal on Thursday and what is happening in the West Bank today cannot and should not be divorced from what has happened in the region.

Colonial violence, mass-murdering military violence, involuntary evictions, mass incarceration all work together: territorial dispossession. Israel will constantly seek to justify itself and regurgitate the same security issues that have successfully shielded it from international scrutiny for decades.

The recent events in the West Bank are not surprising but they reflect the reality. Regionalization and conquest are progressing faster than the world can accept.

This is not a security issue. This is a phased project. Although the methods are different, Israel is renovating land in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Syria and Lebanon in the same way.

There was a time when Israel’s expansion into the West Bank was a warning sign to the world. Today, it is a reality beyond the territory of Palestine. And yet, the world still puts it as a matter of “Israel’s security”.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera’s influence.