Attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, which are often supported by Israeli forces, have gathered pace over the past month since settlers from the Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinian homes on the eastern edge of Tal, southwest of Nablus. On Sunday and Monday, the Israeli military raided multiple towns, villages and refugee camps across the occupied territory, and reports of arrests, home searches and settler attacks have continued to mount. A 15-day siege on three families comprising 15 people, including two children, in the village of Qusra, which is ongoing, drew a rare public condemnation this month from the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel and its West Bank settlements.
Israel is also pushing ahead with plans for the so-called E1 settlement close to Jerusalem, which human rights organisations warn would effectively sever the West Bank in two, further hampering the movement and freedom of Palestinians on either side of it and endangering the possibility of a Palestinian state. These attacks increasingly fit the definition of a pogrom, experts say, with UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese describing Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “pogroms against defenceless civilians”. So, why are experts calling settler attacks pogroms and do they fit the formal definition of one?
Settlers, frequently supported by the Israeli military, have been attacking Palestinian homes, businesses, and agricultural fields across the occupied West Bank. Such attacks have been commonplace for decades as settlements have expanded across the territory, but they gathered pace after October 7, 2023 when Israel launched it genocidal war on Gaza, and have become particularly violent and frequent over the past month. Israeli settlements across the West Bank are illegal under international law.
According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, however, Israeli settlers now number roughly 780,000 across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, living among 192 settlements and 400 outposts, rising to 71 percent of Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control, and 91 percent of the Jordan Valley. Settlers often set up outposts without formal approval around Palestinian villages from which they launch a campaign of harassment, including killing livestock, cutting supply lines and damaging property, in order to drive local residents out. Once they establish a more formal settlement, they often receive retrospective approval from the Israeli government for the settlement.
In some places more recently, illegal settlers have laid siege to individual family homes – such as in the Ras al-Ein area of Qusra – cutting off water and other supplies and damaging orchards or harming livestock. This has set a new pattern: settlers establish a tent adjacent to individual homes; Palestinians’ homes are besieged, with essentials cut off; and Israeli soldiers arrive not to remove the settlers, but rather to remove the family – through arrest or ostensibly for their “protection”. In Qusra, the three besieged families were forced together into one of the family houses.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have occupied one of the other homes for use as a military post and thrown furniture and belongings from its windows, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The UN humanitarian affairs office recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank between January and late July this year, averaging six a day and marking the fastest pace since the agency began systematic tracking two decades ago. Separately, a UN-appointed commission of inquiry has found that the Israeli authorities have repeatedly failed to prevent foreseeable settler attacks and, in some cases, have directly enabled them through army protection and the provision of weapons and funding.
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