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AL-MUARAJAT, WEST BANK — It was early on a mid-September day when a group of Israeli settlers arrived at a small Palestinian Bedouin school in the occupied West Bank. In short order, they stormed the building. Armed and emboldened, the settlers threw rocks, broke windows, and injured several students and teachers. Children scrambled for safety while their teachers tried to shield them.
When the Israeli military arrived, however, it wasn’t to intervene and stop the attack. Instead, the soldiers had come only to arrest the school’s headmaster, who had been taken to a hospital for his injuries.
In the past year, another, less-remarked-upon war against the Palestinians has intensified in the West Bank. Settler violence surged and the military has responded with increasing, and more brazen, complicity.
Instead of maintaining order in its occupation, the army acts as an enforcer for the settlers. With figures like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — a staunch advocate for the annexation of the West Bank — gaining power, settler aggression has transformed into an overt strategy aimed at pushing Palestinians off their land.
“The military, rather than serving as a neutral arbiter, has become an enforcer of this strategy, shielding settlers and punishing the victims.”
Since October 7, there has been a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has resulted in numerous casualties, mass displacement, and significant property damage. According to Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 700 settler attacks have been recorded, with over 1,200 Palestinians displaced, including 600 children, from rural herding communities. In nearly half of these incidents, Israeli soldiers were present in uniform, either participating in or failing to intervene in the violence.
The violence has been especially harrowing for Palestinian Bedouins, a semi-nomadic people the U.N. has said “suffer the brunt of the occupation.”
The settlers’ assaults are more than just acts of aggression. They are the vanguard of a campaign to push Palestinians out, said Hassan Mleihat, who oversees the nongovernmental Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights. “The military, rather than serving as a neutral arbiter, has become an enforcer of this strategy, shielding settlers and punishing the victims. This dynamic, sanctioned at the highest levels, is about cementing control — one arrest, one land seizure, one displaced family at a time.”
The organization found that, over the last year, more than 2,500 attacks and other rights violations have been perpetrated by Israel against Palestinian Bedouins in the West Bank. The assaults on Bedouins, according to Mleihat, include terror attacks; forced displacement; vandalism of public property and services, such as water pipes, electricity lines, and solar panels; and the theft of private property.
“Fear Into the Souls of the Children”
The attack at the Bedouin school illustrates how settlers and the military now operate in tandem, pursuing a common goal of de facto annexation through fear and displacement.
“This isn’t just an attempt to terrorize the students but also the entire community, and it is part of Smotrich’s ‘It’s either us or them’ plan,” Mleihat said.
The morning of the school attack, Rami Damanhouri, the Arab al-Kaabneh School superintendent, was at his desk working on class scheduling and sifting through a long list of administrative tasks.
“Superintendent! Superintendent!” A woman’s screams cut through the silence, jolting him. He recognized the woman as a mother who came to school earlier to register her children for the new school year. At first, he couldn’t make out her words, but her fear was palpable. “They beat me up,” she shouted, over and over.
He followed her outside to the schoolyard, and that’s when he realized she was referring to a group of Israeli settlers who had attacked the premises.
Photo: Ameer Abed Rabbo/Anadolu via Getty Images
Damanhouri acted quickly. He called the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education and as many parents as he could. He then ushered as many students and teachers as possible to the safest classrooms that had doors with locks on them. He and the teachers, however, were outnumbered.
Armed with battens and metal rods, a group of 15 settlers started destroying chairs, tables, and windows before they zeroed in on Damanhouri, who used his body to shield the teachers. Cursing at him in Arabic, they pinned him down to the ground and beat him again before handcuffing him with zip ties and taking him outside.
“` They forcibly threw him into the back of a van, believing they were attempting to abduct him.
Photo: Zain Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images
Impunity and Complicity
The Israeli military, for its part, has also shifted its practices in the West Bank, revealing a tighter alliance between soldiers and settlers.
Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented multiple incidents where the Israeli army not only failed to prevent settler violence but also actively participated in it, expanding the practice of what are called joint operations.
In rural areas, like Ein al-Rashash, the displacement of Palestinian communities was carried out by armed settlers accompanied by soldiers.
The military has also distributed thousands of rifles to settler militias since the Gaza war began, ostensibly for “regional defense” — effectively blurring the line between official military forces and vigilante groups.
The changes mark a dangerous escalation in the West Bank. According to Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, settler attacks are often carried out with impunity, leaving Palestinian communities vulnerable and unprotected as Israeli authorities fail to prosecute settler perpetrators.
One particularly harrowing case documented by Al-Haq involved Ahmad Hijawi, a Palestinian worker attacked by settlers while traveling through the Wadi al-Seeq Bedouin community near Ramallah. Hijawi was held at gunpoint, beaten, and verbally assaulted by settlers who accused him of being a “terrorist.”
Despite the arrival of Israeli soldiers, Hijawi and his colleague were treated as intruders rather than victims. The settlers who assaulted him had a history of targeting the Bedouin community, including destroying homes and schools.
As in the attack on the Bedouin school of Arab al-Kaabneh, soldiers stood by while the settler attack continued to unfold.
