The Murder of a Palestinian Teen by Israeli Settlers Is Their Newest Escalation Attempt

The Israeli settler murderers will likely be released or found innocent based on claims of self-defense; the attacked Palestinians will be tried for attempted murder. But the organized violence has another goal

Here are several possible scenarios following the murder of Palestinian youth Qosai Mi'tan in his village of Burqa, east of Ramallah: The police will release the detained Jew to his home following his attorney’s claims that he was acting in self-defense, and given the fact that his friend was wounded. Following increasing complaints by Religious Zionist lawmakers whereby the army is abandoning the settlers, the army and Shin Bet will arrest Palestinians in that village on suspicion that they assaulted the suspect with weapons (he was wounded and rushed to the hospital), as well as attacked his friends.

Prosecutors will close the file against the two suspects since they’ll be convinced that they were acting in self-defense; or they may change the charges to negligent use of a weapon. Judges in Jerusalem will rule leniently, imposing community service such as working in a kindergarten at the newly authorized outpost of Pnei Kedem on the two.

The Palestinians will face charges at the Ofer military court for attacking Jewish shepherds on the eve of the Sabbath. Their detention will be extended until the end of all legal proceedings. They will be convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to several years in prison. “A conflict over grazing grounds should not end up in an assault on innocent shepherds, who only wanted to feed their sheep and goats on grass that grows on this good earth,” the Lt. Col. judge will wax lyrical.

Delusional? Not in Israel, as Itamar Ben-Gvir's comments Sunday morning stating that the two suspects should be given commendations prove. In June 2022 (during the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz government), a settler from the authorized outpost Nofei Nehemia took the life of 27-year-old Ali Harb from the village of Iskaka, south of Nablus. The settler was taking part in an organized invasion of village lands with the express purpose of establishing a new outpost there. When residents of Iskaka tried to stop the invaders, one of the latter drew out a knife and stabbed Harb to death. Prosecutors closed the file, convinced that the settler acted in self-defense.

The invasion of Burqa’s fields by a group of settlers and their flock was called a "conflict over grazing lands” by the media. This deceptive framing ignores the fixed pattern of ever-growing settler violence against Palestinians, mainly committed by well-armed “Hebrew shepherds.” Since the beginning of the year until July 24, there have been 581 assaults, not including assaults and intimidation that did not end with damage to property or injuries.

“We don’t operate in a vacuum,” said Justice Uzi Fogelman last Thursday, hearing petitions against the law preventing Netanyahu from being declared incapacitated. He was defending the court’s authority to review even Basic Laws. A day before that, he and his colleagues Esther Hayut and Yael Willner actually did operate in a vacuum, as is their sacred wont when it comes to West Bank settlements. They struck down a petition filed by residents of another village called Burqa (this one is near Nablus), asking to allow them to work their land free of assaults by settlers and army-imposed prohibitions on their movement.

The petition was denied since the illegal yeshiva in that location was moved into tiny enclaves designated as “state land,” in the midst of private Palestinian land. The fact that settlers move through this private land, and that this is a surefire recipe for continued harassment and assaults against Palestinians was not taken into account by the judges. Just as state prosecutors who released the stabber from Nofei Nehemia ignored the a priori illegal intention of building an invasive outpost on Palestinian land (public or private, it’s the same in the eyes of international law). Both these rulings provide a tailwind for Jewish pogromists.

Mi'tan’s murder did not take place in a vacuum. The exact details will be clarified through independent investigations in the coming days. But we can already recognize some of the patterns that enabled it:

1. Collaboration between settlers and state institutions. The outpost of Migron, south of Burqa, was built in 1999 on Burqa's land. After a court battle waged by villagers, together with the Peace Now movement, settlers were removed from the outpost in 2012, but the army forbade Palestinians, the legal owners, to return to their plots and till and develop them according to their needs. This prohibition was an invitation for those who three years ago established a sheep farm called Ramat Migron on the same hill. Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the area often report violent harassment by this outpost. The authorities have removed settlers from it several times, but they are undeterred and return again and again.

2. Severing the village from its surroundings, to the point of economic and social suffocation, also appears systematic. Burqa lies less than 10 kilometers (six miles) east of Ramallah. One direct road to that city was blocked for the benefit of the settlement of Psagot, in the early 1980s. A second road was blocked in the early 2000s, when the outpost of Giv’at Assaf was built on the lands of the village of Beitin, across the northern exit from Burqa. This exit is still blocked.

Instead of a trip totaling less than 10 minutes, Burqa residents must take a long detour among neighboring villages to reach Ramallah, taking 30 to 45 minutes. The attendant expenses, as well as the loss of time, have a direct impact on the village’s poor economic situation. Even though in 2014 the army told the B’Tselem human rights group that the exit is not blocked, as far as it is concerned, concrete blocks and rocks placed there do not enable cars to get by. Pedestrians don’t dare walk there. The outpost of Oz Zion, which is repeatedly demolished and rebuilt, lies close to the blocked road.

This too is a method used by settlers: blocking roads and paths used by Palestinian villagers. The army stands off to the side. Thus, settlers blocked the direct exit from Qaryut to Highway 60, or the road from the village of Sinjil to its lands.

3. The common goal shared by the state and the settler assailants remains taking over Palestinian land. Almost 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of Burqa’s land, most of it agricultural, were trapped inside settlements which started to be built in the area in the 80s, or close to roads leading to those settlements. Villagers have no access to their land. Most of their remaining land is in Area C (under full Israeli authority), an Oslo Accord designation which was supposed to be temporary, but which became permanent. Israel prevents the village from building on its land reserves and developing them as it sees fit.

On the other hand, systematic violence by Israeli citizens since the 2000s, and the resulting fear, have prevented villagers from accessing a further 1,200 dunams, according to a 2014 report by Iyad Haddad, a B’Tselem field researcher. The same report noted that one quarter of the village’s residents had been assaulted by settlers. The most known are the torchings of the mosque and the stoning of shepherds and those harvesting olives.

4. Even goat herds and cattle serve as a weapon against the Palestinians. Throughout the West Bank, dozens of shepherding outposts send their hungry flock into Palestinian villages, tent enclosures, fields and orchards with the aim of sabotaging Palestinian crop harvests and deterring the villagers from tending their lands. Moreover, this is a tactic that is employed to enable armed Israeli settlers, often with a military escort, to invade Palestinian communities and further disrupt their life.

This organized and well-funded violence has another goal: To create a provocation that would lead to military escalation. After all, the Palestinians won’t be able to contain the growing attacks against them, committed with a green light from the police, army, and state prosecution, for long. If the Palestinians try to defend themselves or respond, the IDF and the Shin Bet will take action against them.

This goal was expressed by Elisha Yered, one of the two suspects in the Mi'tan murder. Yered, a resident of the Ramat Migron outpost, wrote in a text published by the “Jewish Voice” on July 5: “What is left for us to do as citizens? We can not ease for one moment our demand for a broad and deep-rooted military operation… in all the villages of Judea and Samaria. The goal of such an operation must be victory recognized by the enemy and not rounds of bloody conflict once every few months… The recent mini operation [in Jenin] was the result of widespread protest by the residents of Judea and Samaria who were later joined by MKs and public figures … we will go out and protest even ‘minor’ events such as stone-throwing and firebomb attacks, and we will make it clear to the security establishment that we will not remain silent if this policy of containment continues.”

All streams of the settler movement are coordinated. It is therefore not at all surprising that the head of Central Command, Yehuda Fuchs, is currently in the sights of settler representatives in the Knesset, who accuse him of being weak and enabling Palestinian freedom of movement. The opposite of “containment” is war. War is favored by the supporters of expansionism and annexation because in war it is easier to commit irreversible crimes on a mass scale.