The National Office for Land Defense and Settlement Resistance warned of the repercussions of continuing to arm settlers, which doubles the dangers of the destructive activities of Jewish terrorist organizations operating in the settlements.

In its periodic report on settlements, the office pointed to what was reported by political and media circles in Israel last week about the intention of the occupation army to distribute more machine guns to settlers in the West Bank, according to agreed upon standards, through the rabbis and the regional councils of the settlements, and that the distribution It will include settlers who were not recruited into the so-called emergency teams and preparedness teams, which were established by the occupation authorities after the seventh of last October. In this context, a member of the Knesset from the far-right Religious Zionism party, Zvi Sukkot, explained that the decision to distribute more weapons in the West Bank settlements “is an important matter and would enhance the feeling of security.” At the same time, he called on settlement residents who wish to participate in defending their place of residence to submit requests to carry weapons in order to add another large response force, he said, while the Minister of Finance and Minister of Settlement in the Army Ministry, Bezalel Smotrich, called for waging a defensive war in The West Bank and threatened to turn Tulkarm into "a ruin like the Gaza Strip", if what he described as "terrorism" continued in the region. According to figures from the so-called National Security Committee, 250,000 Israelis applied to obtain licenses to carry weapons after October 7, while demand for training centers on the use of weapons increased, and thousands of Israelis obtained weapons for the first time.

Weaponization is an ancient phenomenon. 
It should be noted here that arming the settlers did not begin after the 7th of October. Rather, it was much earlier than this date and was a phenomenon that accompanied construction in the settlements from the beginning, but in a relatively limited manner. There is no accurate information about the number of weapons that the settlers possessed in the West Bank before this date. The policy of the occupation authorities, according to the left-leaning Hebrew website “Siha Mekomit,” was based on obscuring the amount of weapons possessed by the settlers in the West Bank. However, the situation began It transforms over time. The process of arming settlers took a strong boost in 2015 with Likud Gilad Erdan assuming the position of Minister of Internal Security, who introduced a number of amendments to the policy of granting weapons licenses, including facilitating the procedures for obtaining the necessary licenses and encouraging settlers to carry them.

The situation has changed decisively after the success of the right and the fascist right in the last elections for the Knesset in November of 2022, and with the formation of the thirty-seventh occupation government in early 2023 headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and his fascist and neo-Nazi partners such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, as it rose significantly. Number of Israelis who applied for a personal weapons license. Just to clarify the picture by comparison, in 2021 the occupation authorities issued approximately 10,000 new weapons licenses, and in 2022 they issued approximately 13,000 licenses, but during the year 2023, after Itamar Ben Gvir took over the Ministry of National Security, the occupation authorities issued approximately 38,000 licenses. New, and this is before October 7th. After October 7, applications for weapons licenses multiplied insanely, as the daily rate of submitting applications for weapons reached between 8 and 10 thousand applications.

Amendments to the laws regarding the possession of personal weapons. 
Minister Ben Gvir was concerned with distributing weapons on a larger scale, especially to settlers. He worked to introduce amendments to the laws on the acquisition of personal weapons to expand the base of those who can possess them, facilitate the procedures for obtaining weapons licenses, and ease the conditions for their possession, especially among the categories of former soldiers aged 21 and above, and those They performed civil service instead of military service, and even ambulance, fire and rescue personnel and volunteers accompanied them, as well as new immigrants upon their arrival. As a result, the number of settlers who obtained weapons licenses reached unprecedented levels. From October 7 until the end of 2023, more than 250,000 settlers applied for a weapon license, and more than 26,000 of them obtained it, in addition to 44,000 settlers who obtained it. On conditional licences. The facilities introduced by Ben Gvir had a significant impact on these large numbers, as some settlers obtained the license through a short conversation of no more than 20 seconds with employees of the Ministry of National Security.

The occupation authorities, as well as the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, did not limit themselves to facilitating the procedures for the settlers to obtain weapons. Rather, these authorities went further than that when they decided, under pressure from this minister, to establish what are called “emergency teams” or “preparedness units,” which spread throughout the country. Wide after the occupation army called up the reserves to serve and join the war on the Gaza Strip. Ben Gvir personally supervised the establishment of 700 new alert units between October 7 and November throughout Mandatory Palestine. These are paramilitary units, consisting of 10 to 40 members of local settlers in each individual settlement, and subject to police supervision. The occupation in the 1948 territories, and the occupation army in the West Bank, and its mission was determined to provide the initial response in the event of security challenges until the arrival of the competent forces. Ben Gvir took over the task of distributing weapons to these units and worked to provide them with weapons and combat equipment such as helmets and protective vests, about 7 thousand pieces of which went to the settlements in the West Bank, including the settlement outposts, which everyone knows have become hothouses for operating Jewish terrorist organizations. In the West Bank.

Contribution of institutions to arming settlers. 
Arming the settlers was not limited to the occupation army or the Ministry of National Security, but rather institutions and entities affiliated with the settlers participated in this. At the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip, Yossi Dagan, head of the so-called “Shomron Regional Council,” meaning the settlements in the northern West Bank, took the initiative to distribute hundreds of weapons through his council, in coordination with the occupation army and police, to the settlers. The Council distributed 200 M16 rifles, of the advanced model known as the M4, on October 22. He announced that he was in the process of purchasing 300 new pieces, and the purchase of these weapons was financed by donations from friends of the “Shomorn” around the world, as they described it. In the same direction, the “Shevat Zion” and “Tekuma 23” associations, which specialize in supporting settlements and settlers, took the initiative to launch a donation campaign to collect money to arm the settlers, and they were able to collect more than two million shekels at the beginning of the campaign.

Providing settlements with heavy weapons. 
Israeli political and media circles report that the occupation army is studying the possibility of distributing anti-armor weapons to a number of settlements in the West Bank, as part of a plan through which the person responsible for the security of the settlement, affiliated with the occupation army, keeps this weapon in stores for use when necessary. The occupation army is also studying the purchase of 200 vehicles. Armored for distribution to "readiness units" in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the settlements in the north. The occupation army had provided settlement guards with a number of armored cars in light of the escalation of resistance operations in the West Bank. As for the latest plans of the occupation army in this regard, it is what was announced by the Minister of the Occupation Army, Yoav Galant, last week about the intention of the occupation authorities to establish “rapid intervention forces” in the towns near the border with the West Bank, during his visit to the head of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, Yuli Edelstein, Israeli army soldiers are on the line of contact between the West Bank and Israel. Gallant explained in his post on the “X” platform that he ordered the formation of intervention forces that will rely on townspeople and graduates of combat units, which is another step that will strengthen security elements.

Different reactions.. 
Arming settlers sparked widespread reactions due to the seriousness of this to the situation not only in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, but also abroad and in the State of Israel itself, especially since the spread of weapons coincided with the efforts of extreme right-wing circles in Israel to establish semi-official militias, as is done. Itamar Ben Gvir. What is striking here is that this armament is accepted by the Zionist community and political and security leaders under the pretext of “self-defense” from security threats. Opposition to arming settlers and the spread of weapons among Israelis came mainly from Israeli human rights organizations that oppose occupation and settlement, such as the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights (B'Tselem), the Peace Now Movement, and other organizations that expressed their concern that this weapon would be used not only in terrorist operations against Palestinians. Rather, it is feared that it will also be used in crimes, cases of domestic violence, personal disputes, suicides, etc.

This process also met with tortuous opposition from the United States of America, as the administration of President Biden last December refrained from completing a deal to sell thousands of M16 weapons to the occupying state and conditioned its approval of the deal on a pledge not to distribute these weapons to settlers in the West Bank. The deal was completed after the occupation government pledged to do so. It was normal for the occupation government to make such a pledge after it secured the arming of the settlers from local arms production companies and provided the goods to Itamar Ben Gvir and a number of settlement councils, as well as associations specialized in providing support to the settlers, including weapons.

In light of all this, and with the spread of “emergency teams,” “alert teams,” and other paramilitary formations, the danger of arming settlers to the Palestinian people in the West Bank is completely clear and does not require speculation. It is true that, in the current circumstances, these settlers are more inclined to use violence in operations of sabotage, assaulting citizens, destroying property, and in the widespread displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities from their sites and pastures, especially in the areas south of the Hebron Mountains, the Palestinian Jordan Valley, and the edge of the Jordan Valley as well. However, arming the settlers It doubles the risks of the destructive activities of Jewish terrorist organizations, which take the settlements, settlement outposts, and so-called pastoral farms as safe havens to protect the occupation army, and increases the possibility of the situation sliding towards the practice of terrorism on a larger scale, especially since the current violence has begun to take an upward trend with the continuation of acts of genocide and war. The brutality launched by the occupation army against the Gaza Strip since the eighth of last October.