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A masked settler threatening Palestinian farmers picking olive during this year's olive harvest.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in the first half of 2008, 222 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians were recorded, in comparison with 291 incidents for all of 2007.

In an interview with Haaretz, published 3 October, Brigadier General Gadi Shamni, currently head of the Israeli military’s central command, admitted "there has been a rise in Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria [West Bank]. In the past, only a few dozen individuals took part in such activity, but today that number has grown into the hundreds. That's a very significant change.”

On 14 October, in retaliation for the injuring of a 9-year-old settler youth in Yitzhar, dozens of armed settlers attacked villagers in Asira al-Kabaliya and Madama to the south of Nablus, causing widespread destruction of homes and property, shooting, beatings, and resulting in the hospitalization of eight Palestinians, including two children.

Currently, at the height of the olive harvesting season, settler attacks against Palestinian farmers have reached new heights, with daily attacks occurring throughout the West Bank. The olive harvest is a key component of the Palestinian economy, bringing in approximately $100 million and supplementing the income of around 100,000 Palestinian families.

Israeli Labor party leader and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, today called for steps to be taken against Israeli right-wing extremists, proposing to bar them from entering the West Bank, and, depending on the severity of the case, potentially placing them in administrative detention (detention without charge or trial, authorized by administrative order rather than by judicial decree).  

Yet what has suddenly sparked Barak’s concern for state action against the settlers is not the ongoing violence and human rights abuses they commit against Palestinian civilians. On the contrary, Barak only proposes these penalties against settlers who have verbally or physically attacked Israeli soldiers or police officers.

His recommendations come in the wake of statements made by settlers on 26 October, to Israeli police officers and soldiers in protest of the removal of the “Federman Farm” settlement outpost near Hebron.  According to reports, some of the demonstrating settlers cursed the soldiers, and at least one stated that the soldiers deserve to die or be kidnapped by Palestinians. 

Following that incident, settler Shmuel Ben Yishai, a right wing activist and former member of the banned fascist Kach party, is quoted as saying during an interview on Israeli Army Radio, "God damn the IDF units. We wish they would be destroyed by their enemies, that all of them would be Gilad Shalit, that they would all be killed and slaughtered, because that's what they deserve."

In reply to these incidents, Defence Minister Barak affirmed that, "We are already working with all our might to restrain and halt these phenomena, with an iron hand if necessary. There, it was words. In other cases, it is deeds—raising a hand against soldiers and policemen."

So, while the ever increasing number of actual physical attacks against Palestinians and their property result merely in statements by Barak as to the settlers’ “thuggery,” harsh words against Israeli state authorities by the settlers leads to calls for broad and severe action.  This is because what Barak perceives to be at stake is not the upholding of human rights or international law, but to counter “an attempt to undermine the state's sovereignty.”

Moreover, Barak’s attempt to separate the “extremist settlers” from the rest of the settler movement is either myopic ignoring or knowingly obfuscating the fact that the actions of the settler youth and activist fringe of the settlement movement enjoy the backing of their religious and secular leadership. General Shamni admitted as much during his interview with Haaretz when he said, "The margins [in the settler community] are expanding, because they are enjoying a tailwind and the backing of part of the leadership, both rabbinical and public, whether in explicit statements or tacitly."

Clearly, the 40+ year Israeli settlement enterprise could not exist and flourish without the explicit political and financial support of the majority of Israeli society. These recent recommendations by Barak illustrate how the settlers are an integral part of Israeli society, held responsible for their violent actions only when directed against fellow Israelis. It is time that the international community hold Israel responsible for its proven lack of due diligence in preventing, investigating and prosecuting the hundreds of violent settler attacks against Palestinians and their property each year. Stated international support for human rights and peace between Israelis and Palestinians must be backed up by real action and not only speeches.