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Several Israeli Jews from Zohar Sabah approached al-Mu’arrajat, a Palestinian village just north of the city of Jericho. Casually dressed, some wearing flip flops, kippahs and makeshift masks, they were settlers from a small, illegal farming outpost built on Palestinian land.
Three of the settlers, carrying clubs, marched into a school as teachers scrambled to bolt classroom doors to protect children, many screaming in terror during the incident last month.
Refusing to leave, they began beating the principal, vandalising his office, and dragged him to a car in an attempted abduction, while continuing to bang on windows and doors in an attempt to gain access to the classrooms. More settlers arrived outside the school, one shouting “You’re murderers.”
Israeli police and soldiers arrived minutes later to diffuse the situation but not before arresting the principal and another Palestinian who complained about the attack.
The violence witnessed at al-M’u’arrajat on 16 September is but a tiny fraction of the chaos engulfing the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank which has seen successive UK Governments roll out sanctions over the past year targeting Israeli settlers.
Last week, further sanctions were introduced to ratchet up the pressure on Israel to rein in settler attacks on Palestinians which have reached unprecedented levels since Hamas operatives killed nearly 1,200 Israelis on 7 October 2023.
“Today’s measures will help bring accountability to those who have supported and perpetrated such heinous abuses of human rights,” UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a statement as the Government rolled out sanctions targeting illegal outposts and organisations bankrolling the settlers.
“The Israeli government must crack down on settler violence and stop settler expansion on Palestinian land, he said.
The sanctions by Keir Starmer’s Government targeting eight individuals, three illegal outposts, and four organisations, are meagre in the face of the settlers’ decades-long campaign of terror and swelling influence.
Over 20,000 settlers live in at least 100 illegal West Bank outposts and close to half a million more are in other Israeli-recognised settlements on Palestinian territory which violate international law.
Hamas’s brutal assault and the subsequent catastrophic war in Gaza which has left over 43,000 dead have only served to accelerate the goals of the settlers to seize more land and reestablish a foothold in the decimated enclave.
“The sanctions Western governments have imposed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank are not effective,” said Dr Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London told Byline Times.
“They send a signal that the governments imposing sanctions don’t care about seriously tackling the problem of illegal settlements.”
Crucially, the sanctions ignore the settlers’ main sponsor; the Israeli state.
Under the fog of war, Israel’s government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has set about deepening a regime of occupation in the West Bank and Gaza with settlers now embedded in every level of the Israeli army, police, and government, including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“Israel is doubling down,” said Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK’s Crisis Response Manager.
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