Israeli settler violence

Israeli settler violence refers to acts of violence committed by Jewish Israeli settlers and their supporters against Palestinians and Israeli security forces, predominantly in the West Bank. Although the majority of settlers do not engage in violence, there has been a rise in violent acts by extremists against Palestinians, non-Jews, Israel Police and IDF troops in the early twenty-first century. In 2007 Israeli prosecutors determined that of 515 criminal suits relating to violent activity committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and Israeli security forces, 502 were related to right-wing Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories. In 2008, the senior Israeli commander in the West Bank said that a hard core of a few hundred activists were involved in violence against the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

Some prominent Jewish religious figures living in the occupied territories, as well as Israeli government officials, have condemned and expressed outrage over such behavior, while religious justifications for settler killings have also been given. While Israeli media said the defense establishment began taking a harder line against unruly settlers starting in 2008, an EU heads of mission report found that settler violence had more than tripled in the three years up to 2011.United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) figures state that the annual rate of settler attacks (2,100 attacks in 8 years) has almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014.

Palestinian police are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers, a fact which diminishes their credibility among Palestinians. UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment.

Israel has justified its civilian settlements by stating the territories in question are not occupied but disputed and that a temporary use of land and buildings for various purposes appears permissible under a plea of military necessity and that the settlements fulfilled security needs. The United Nations affirmed the principle of international law that the continuation of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations is a crime and that colonial peoples have the inherent right to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against colonial Powers and alien domination in exercise of their right of self-determination. National liberation struggles are categorized as international armed conflicts by Article 1(4) of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 to which the majority of states (including the Western states) are parties. The International Court of Justice concluded that Israel had breached its obligations under international law by establishing settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and that Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of imposing a régime, which is contrary to international law. The Court also concluded that the Israeli régime violates the basic human rights of the Palestinians by impeding the liberty of movement of the inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (with the exception of Israeli citizens) and their exercise of the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living.

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