How much power do Israeli settlers have over West Bank policy?

Settler violence and settlement expansion have risen sharply since the 2022 election brought Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition to power. And its two leading far-right figures, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, were part of a joint list that won more than 10% of the vote. Yet the settler movement's influence extends far beyond them. So how much power do settlers have over Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank and the future of Palestinians? Our report starts near the settlements of Ganim and Kadim in the occupied West Bank. It may look like an ordinary celebration for children, but it is much more than meets the eye. The festive atmosphere is unfolding in an area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to which settlers have recently returned. Security is tight, especially today. It is Sukkot, a Jewish holiday. Hundreds of settlers have gathered to celebrate and to march between settlements that have been re-established with government approval. One of those settlements is here in Ganim. New roads, a few containers. More than 20 families moved here a few weeks ago. In 2005, Israel dismantled Ganim and other settlements as part of its withdrawal from Gaza. We came back and reclaimed the land again. We are still emotional about it. I don't know if I will ever stop. I'm driving along the road and then comes the moment when you see the caravans and I get really, really emotional. Maria Musulati is the only one willing to speak on camera. We have a living room, a kitchen. You can film the dogs, all the furniture. Like Ganim, most of the settlements and outposts are in Area C of the occupied West Bank, which is under full Israeli military and administrative control. They're illegal under international law. It's estimated that more than 200 new outposts and farms have been established since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022. Far-right ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, themselves settlers, have openly pushed for West Bank annexation. The time has come for us to return to be the landlords of our country again. The time is here to apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. About half a million people, less than 5% of Israel's total population, are Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, which Israeli authorities refer to as Judea and Samaria. In Israel's 2022 parliamentary election, the right-wing parties that went on to form Netanyahu's governing coalition received altogether nearly 50% of the votes. In Israeli settlements, support for these parties was even stronger, more than 80%. But overall, settlers in the West Bank only made up an estimated 3 to 4 percent of the Israeli electorate in 2022. So why do they have so much influence? Guyut Al-Sheir argues that alongside right-wing voters within Israel proper, settlers have significantly influenced the political agenda and the public discourse. The settlers became the symbol of what it means to be Jewish for the right wing in Israel. So the settlers control the political imagination of the right wing in Israel. They got hold of all the crucial positions that actually determine what Israel does in the West Bank. And you can see that with the way that the Israeli government is unable to deal with Jewish terrorism. Last year, Netanyahu's government approved David Zinni to head Israel's domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet. He's considered to have strong ties with the settler community. This, too, is reflecting Netanyahu's dependence on the far right, says Guyut Al-Sheir. Netanyahu is concerned with one thing only, remaining in power. So why should he not give them all the power that they want if they actually serve his cause of remaining in power? That vision plays out on the ground. Videos have documented settler violence against Palestinians, sometimes under the protection or with the participation of Israeli soldiers. UN data shows that dozens of Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured in settler attacks across the occupied West Bank over the past three years. Ayyed Abu Fazza is right on the front lines of it. Settlers are just across from his home. He set up the surveillance system to stay prepared, though there's not much he can do other than recording. He shows us footage of a recent attempt by settlers to cut through the fence. Look, he's damaging the fence with his foot. And he brought his camels. They do this. They're trying to evict us like they did with our other Bedouin communities. During our interview, settlers once again begin moving their camels passing directly by his house. About 150 people live in this small Palestinian Bedouin community near Taibeh, many of them children. Their parents are taking turns standing guard to protect them and their homes. You see the settlers right over there. They are bringing all their camels here for shepherding right next to this Palestinian community. And people here tell us this is happening nearly on a daily basis. It is a form of intimidation, but they also tell us they are not going to leave. Meanwhile, far-right politicians in Jerusalem are pushing policies to expand Israeli control across the West Bank and make it harder for Palestinians to remain. Former Deputy Mayor Aryeh King says influencing Knesset members has become easier. In order to influence the Knesset members, we need to use all tools we have. media, public, social media, and using the social media today is very easy, very cheap, and we can target them, and it's what we do. Asked about the illegality of those policies under international law, he dismisses the question, arguing that in his view, the Bible gives Israel the land. Who cares about the international law when you open the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the Bible and you see it's written it's our land God gave it to us so you really think about I care about United Nations EU or US since 2023 Israeli society has shifted further right analysts say making restraints on settlement expansion the occupied West Bank less likely to be a political priority whoever governs next the IDF have to take care of Iran of Syria of Lebanon, on Gaza. Even if there is a different government in Israel, the West Bank is not going to be high on its priorities. Maria, who moved here from Haifa, proudly shows us the container she now calls home and where she lives with her five children. She says other settlers here arrived from all over Israel as well as settlements in Syria's Golan Heights, which are Israeli-occupied. She hopes the state will continue to support settlers like her. I hope the state will go hand-in-hand with us on this. In the end, we came here with permission, willingly, on a mission. We hope it will stay that way. Smotrich's party, one of the strongest advocates of settlement expansion, is at risk of failing to cross the electoral threshold. But there are other right-wing and far-right parties that promise to expand them. Isaac Herskovitz lectures in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. He co-authored the book Religious Zionism and the Settlement Project. Welcome to DW. Before we get into the background of the settler movement, can we start with your thoughts on today's arrests and the violence that we've seen in the West Bank over the last few days? I'm very happy there were arrests, and I hope those responsible will get tried and justice according to what is necessary and important, because such violent attacks, of course, are not the path that the Israeli society wants to see. We are a land that is ruled by justice and violence. Any sort of violence is, of course, not the way of life that we educate our people. However, I must say that I do feel some hypocrisy when it comes to the way international media deals with this sort of violence. For example, many of the countries where the coverage is so elaborate and extensive on this violence. When it comes to violence against Jews, they're not that elaborate, and you don't see that amount of coverage. For example, Berlin police declares that seven anti-Semitic incidents occur daily, and more than a hundred violent assaults, anti-Semitic violent assaults, occur annually. And I don't see the same media coverage. Yeah, let me just interrupt you there, just because I'm sitting here in Berlin, in Germany. I've got to say that certainly here in Berlin, you do see a lot of coverage. You see a lot of coverage of the fact that anti-Semitic attacks have increased. But take your point. We've seen acts of violent intimidation and destruction as a part of this wave of attacks. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, described the violent settlers as terrorists. Do you think that's a fair description? Well, if literally terror means evoking terror upon others, which is, of course, what is happening, yet the form or the violence is not lethal the way, as we know, terrorist groups throughout the world, where they indeed, I mean, usually the fly Dubai incident, that's what I would call terror. the october 7th is terror uh same occurrences that happen in germany and france where you have casualties that's terror i would say these are violent vigilance and they need to be uh of course in court and they need to be in jail if they of course uh disobey the law there's no question about it i don't think the semantics here is that important i do think that again we need to have no double standards one standard for all again you say we don't need to get hung up on the semantics and yet you appear to have um let's talk about let's continue the semantic argument because well not so much the argument the discussion because i think one of the the things that's important about this discussion is what are we talking about when we talk about settlers are we talking about a unified group of people with a singular purpose well of course not nowadays if we talk about the 67 lines uh approximately 1 million jews live across the 67 lines uh approximately half of them live in the Jerusalem area and being that judea and samaria were not part of israel up until that point and half of jerusalem nowadays in jerusalem and throughout judea and samaria we have approximately almost 1 million jews living there 99.98 i guess percent of them are law-obedient and they do not act in no way, shape, or form in violent – they do not participate in any violent forms. They do, however, stand for the Jewish right to live in the land of their forefathers. But of course, the settlers are not a unified group. In fact, many people do not know, but most of the settlers do not even, are not part of the religious Zionism, which is considered the more idealistic, hardcore part of the settler group. Many of them are ultra-Orthodox, some of them even non-participant within Zionist circles, some of them are secular, many of them are very moderate in their political views, and they are part of the fabric of Israeli society. Yeah, I thought it was worth just getting into that definition because it's quite easy to view a term and consider a sort of a monolith of people. Let's talk about this notion of illegality or otherwise. Why is there so much resistance from settlers and from Israeli politicians to the view expressed by the UN, the International Court of Justice and even Israel's Supreme Court that these settlements are illegal? The Israeli Supreme Court never said that. I'm sorry. And moreover, the UN did say that, but the UN also said that Zionism is racism. There is no sovereign form of declaration that settlements are illegal. In fact, in order for them to be illegal, they need to be a conquered territory. However, they are not conquered because the 67, the Six-Day War, was between Israel and Jordan. There was no Palestine before 67. Okay, so just to be clear on where it is. The territory was conquered from Jordan, but Jordan never declared its own territory. So just to be clear where you stand. So this was no man's land up until 67. Sorry. So just to be clear where you stand, as far as you're concerned, these settlers and these settlements, is it your view that they are legal? Of course, yeah. Okay, all right. By the way, one of the Supreme Courts, the deputy chair of the Israeli Supreme Court lives in a settlement, just to make it clear. All right. But you will accept that that view goes against the views, as I say, of so many of the international community, hypocritical or otherwise. Why do you think there has been this upsurge in settler violence over the last few weeks? Well, it's not exactly an upsurge in violence in the past few weeks. there is uh raise in violence throughout the past months uh the reasons for that are several first of all we have to understand that we're talking about a group of three to four hundred uh militant youth uh uh teens from across the range uh many of them uh are problematic kids that went off the rails uh however uh again as i said beforehand there's a lot of media coverage here which creates some uh abnormality when it comes to the real numbers the real numbers are that indeed there are some clashes many of these clashes are initiated by provocation from left-wing uh uh uh left-wing uh uh so-called peace activists and and arab and arab people from from the from the villages throughout and some indeed occur because of these uh these except that what and i i accept that well you've got to first of all if you accept that the media is biased because then maybe what you say pertains because the pictures that we've been seeing over the last few weeks have been of Palestinians driven from their homes, Palestinians having to set up watch groups to ensure that settlers don't attack them. We've seen settlers attacked and we've seen American journalists attacked by the groups that you have just sort of categorized as well wayward youth which seems wrong they are it's a fact i mean they they're all between 15 to 20 21 years old that's their ages we know who they are the police knows who they are i don't know why they haven't arrested them all up until this point there are they're trying to uh to take care of them mostly mostly socially uh uh and indeed as i said before and i continue and i will continue to say whoever disobeys the law needs to be in jail i think that's that's uh that's a prerogative of any society to let uh those uh those villains be in jail however we must understand the true numbers the true numbers of a million people living across the 67 uh border and of them we have three or four hundred people who misbehave You see the pictures, the videos from France. So are all citizens of France going and burning houses and city halls and cars? Perhaps when we discuss the rights in France, we will get you on to discuss them. But for now, we'll keep it to the West Bank. And thank you so much for your time. Isaac Hershkowitz from Bar-Ilan University. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. Thank you very much.