Abdullah Abu Rahma: The settlers work in an organized manner, belong to extremist parties, and have strong influence in state institutions.
 Nihad Abu Ghosh: 1,800 settler attacks in the West Bank after October 7 resulted in the martyrdom of 18 Palestinians
 Nour Odeh: The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion is an invaluable opportunity for the Palestinians to end the occupation
 Sari Samour: Settlers represent a “state within a state” and enjoy unexpected influence in institutions and the judiciary
 Dr. Fawzi Al-Samhouri: What happened in Jet comes in the context of the war of extermination and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people
 Dr. Rafat Sayed Ahmed: Settlers are inseparable from the occupying state and it is time for the international community to put an end to them
 Jawdat Manna: There are 65 Zionist terrorist organizations licensed in Israel, some of which receive funding in America

Israeli settlers' attacks and crimes in the West Bank have escalated in an unprecedented manner recently, with many Palestinian villages and cities witnessing violent attacks, the latest of which was the barbaric attack on the village of Jit, east of Qalqilya, which resulted in the martyrdom of the young man Rashid Mahmoud Abdul Qader Sedda (23 years old), the injury of another, and the burning of homes and vehicles, in a crime that brought to mind the barbaric attack on the town of Huwara, south of Nablus, about a year and a half ago.

In separate interviews with Al-Quds.com and Al-Quds.com, writers, political analysts and officials considered that these attacks by settlers are taking place amidst clear political and military support from the Israeli government, which overlooks these crimes and even supports them indirectly, which raises fears of the possibility of mass massacres in the future.

They believe that these attacks are not merely individual crimes or reactions to certain political developments, but rather part of a systematic policy aimed at emptying the land of its Palestinian inhabitants, imposing a new settlement reality, and strengthening the demographic reality in favor of the settlers.

According to writers and political analysts, this policy is linked to the roots of the Zionist project, which seeks to achieve its primary goal of cleansing the land of the indigenous population, benefiting from the political and military support that the settlements and settlers enjoy from the occupying Israeli state.

The writers, analysts and officials agreed on the need to take action to confront these escalating attacks, whether by forming popular protection committees on the ground, or by strengthening diplomatic and legal efforts on the international scene.

Settler crimes go unpunished

Abdullah Abu Rahma, Director General of the Popular Action and Support for Steadfastness Department in the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, said: The current period is witnessing a repetition of a systematic ongoing policy by settler militias in the West Bank, where they carry out attacks without facing any deterrent, but rather enjoy direct political support.

Abu Rahma pointed out that the crimes committed by settlers go unpunished, while the international community is content with condemnation and denunciation without exerting any real pressure on the Israeli occupation state, which reinforces the settlers’ sense of impunity and encourages them to continue committing more crimes.

Abu Rahma explained that this systematic escalation by settlers led to horrific violent attacks in areas such as: Hawara, Duma, Al-Mughayyir, Jit and Qusra, noting that these crimes are likely to expand in scope and type.

Abu Rahma pointed out that the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission has monitored 1,833 attacks carried out by settlers in the West Bank since October 7, including 1,500 attacks since the beginning of this year. Among the total of those attacks were 273 arson attacks targeting (property, homes, shops, vehicles, agricultural fields, and barns).

Palestinian bloodshed

Abu Rahma stressed that these attacks by settlers are unprecedented in terms of their intensity and quality, which makes Palestinian blood permissible for the settlers, warning of the possibility of massacres occurring in the coming period.

Abu Rahma stressed that the settlers, with the support of the official Israeli side, aim to resolve the conflict through the forced displacement of Palestinians and emptying the land of its original inhabitants, in order to impose a new settlement reality.

Abu Rahma pointed out that there are currently 190 settlements and 200 settlement outposts in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, in which about 750,000 settlers live, with efforts to increase this number to one million settlers by legalizing settlement outposts and expanding existing settlements, which reflects the decisive demographic dimension in the conflict.

Abu Rahma stressed that the settlers work in an organized manner, belong to extremist religious Zionist parties, receive military training, and have strong influence within the institutions of the Israeli state and its army.

Abu Rahma explained that in the event of an attack by settlers, the residents must move quickly and collectively, as part of a popular uprising to defend themselves and repel the settlers.

He stressed the need to activate protection committees, especially in areas close to settlements and bypass roads, pointing out the importance of the role that factions must play in this context.

On the international level, Abu Rahma called on countries to adopt sanctions against the settlers and their militias, as well as against the official Israeli side that provides them with protection and care.

Settler attacks receive official sponsorship

For his part, writer, political analyst and specialist in Israeli affairs Nihad Abu Ghosh said: Following the events of October 7, attacks by Israeli settlers escalated significantly in the West Bank, exceeding 1,800 attacks, resulting in the martyrdom of about 18 Palestinians, and none of them were held accountable for all of these crimes, which confirms that they are being carried out with broad support.

Abu Ghosh explained that these attacks enjoy official sponsorship from the Israeli state and its institutions, in addition to support from organized political forces, which indicates that the settlers enjoy official protection and cover.

Abu Ghosh believes that settler violence is an integral part of the violence of the occupying state and its various institutions, as everyone aims to suppress the Palestinians and resolve the conflict with them. However, settler attacks take on a collective and particularly violent character, which increases the danger of the current escalation.

Activating protection and guarding committees with the participation of Palestinian security

Abu Ghosh pointed out that the aim of these attacks is to control as much Palestinian land as possible, suppress the Palestinian national movement, and force Palestinians to live in limited areas.

He stressed that these attacks are organized, not individual, and are carried out by extremist religious Zionist groups.

Abu Ghosh said: "As long as these attacks enjoy official sponsorship and support, they will intensify in the coming period, and everything will be permissible for the settlers."

Abu Ghosh stressed the need to confront these attacks by achieving national unity and creating new types of protection and guard committees, especially in villages and rural areas.

He also stressed the importance of the involvement of Palestinian security forces and factions in these committees on a popular basis, and their support by society.

On the diplomatic and legal levels, Abu Ghosh pointed out the importance of documenting all crimes committed by settlers and using them in international legal battles, noting that efforts must focus on finding a unified national formula agreed upon by all Palestinians to confront current challenges.

Continuation of the Nakba events with new tools

As for the writer and political analyst Nour Odeh, she considered that the recent attack launched by settlers on the village of Jit, east of Qalqilya, has implications that go beyond the brutality of the violence used in it, as it reflects a state of complete chaos among the settlers, supported by a general atmosphere within Israel that encourages these attacks.

Awda stressed that this political climate considers attacks on Palestinians a golden opportunity to achieve the goals of displacement and instilling fear, pointing out that what happened in the Nakba continues with new tools.

She warned that this crime is not an isolated incident, but rather part of an escalation in settler attacks, which she sees as linked to the presence of an extreme right-wing government in Israel that includes groups of extremist fascist settlers in sensitive and influential positions within the occupying state.

Awda explained that these attacks find ideological and political cover within the Israeli government, which gives them implicit legitimacy and makes them difficult to stop.

Eliminate the possibility of a Palestinian entity

Awda pointed out that the underlying objectives behind these attacks can be understood through the Israeli government coalition program and Bezalel Smotrich’s plan, which was published in 2017. According to this plan, the religious Zionist right seeks to complete what the Nakba did not fully accomplish, through ethnic cleansing and seizing land from the river to the sea, with the aim of crushing any possibility of a Palestinian political or cultural entity representing the Palestinians.

Awda pointed out that there is a systematic process of dismantling the Palestinian presence on the ground, whether through attacks on Bedouin population centers, villages, towns and cities, or through moral and political dismantling aimed at weakening the Palestinian Authority, not dealing with it, piracy of funds, and creating division among the Palestinians.

Awda believes that this policy also includes the genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, and therefore all of this policy is part of the larger plan that the Israeli right seeks to achieve.

Regarding the international response to these attacks, Awda said that international condemnations are not enough, but must be followed by practical steps.

She pointed out that the work must be from the outside, because without external pressure, this project is continuing strongly, and the Israeli right realizes that it does not have time, and therefore it is racing against time to achieve the greatest amount of accomplishments.

Dismantling the occupation and colonial system and compensating the Palestinians

Awda stressed that the legal opinion issued by the International Court of Justice last month, which considered the entire Israeli occupation to be illegitimate and illegal, must be invested in, and that Israel must dismantle the system of occupation and colonialism and compensate the Palestinians for everything they have lost because of this system over the decades.

Awda stressed the need to exploit this fatwa in the context of adopting policies that begin with banning weapons, banning settlement products, pursuing companies that invest in the colonial system, and banning settlers from traveling.

Awda believes that the fatwa that Palestine obtained from the International Court of Justice is a “priceless national treasure,” and considers it the most important opportunity available to the Palestinians at the international level to end the occupation. If it is not invested, we will have lost the most important opportunity that has been available to us at the international level to push towards ending the occupation, regardless of the existence of negotiations or a political horizon.

Awda pointed out that Israel will not change its behavior unless there is a heavy price for the continuation of the occupation system, noting that it is impossible to separate the behavior of the settlers from the state that provides them with cover.

Settlers' rampage with direct government support

In turn, writer and political analyst Sari Samour said: What the village of Jit witnessed a few days ago, a fierce attack by Israeli settlers, which resulted in the martyrdom of a young Palestinian man and the injury of another, in addition to the burning of homes and vehicles, is reminiscent of the attack launched by settlers on the town of Huwara, south of Nablus, about a year and a half ago, which came before the war on the Gaza Strip.

Samour believes that although some people try to justify the settlers' attacks as a "reaction" to the events of October 7, the latest attack and other attacks clearly indicate that the settlers are operating in complete chaos and with direct support from the Israeli government.

According to Samour, there is an undeclared reason behind the elites in Israeli society’s refusal to have settlers live in cities like Tel Aviv and Herzliya, for fear of their demagoguery and violence. Therefore, they were pushed towards settlement in the West Bank, where they carry out continuous attacks on Palestinians.

Samour pointed out that in conjunction with the ongoing massacres in Gaza, settler attacks in the West Bank have escalated with official Israeli government disregard, and even if the results of these attacks were the killing of ten Palestinians at once in settler attacks, the official Israeli level would disregard them compared to the scale of crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Expect an escalation in settler violence and crimes during the upcoming period

Sammour expected that the settlers' crimes and attacks would increase in violence and severity in the coming period, as the settlers would target everything from killing, burning and destruction, and everything would become permissible for them, in light of the clear support of the Israeli army and the presence of settlers within its ranks. According to Sammour, these crimes will only be stopped by the victory of the resistance in the Gaza Strip.

Samour said the settlers represent a "state within the Israeli state" and have unexpected influence over Israeli institutions and the judiciary.

He believes that the ongoing settler attacks mean that the Zionist project has returned to its basics in an open manner, which is emptying the land of its indigenous inhabitants to achieve the principle of “a land without a people, for a people without a land.”

According to Samour, Israel seeks to resolve the conflict in favor of emptying the land of Palestinians and replacing them with settlers, in an attempt to change the demographic equation in favor of the Israelis.

Samour stressed that there is an urgent need to repel settler attacks, by forming popular protection committees immediately, and putting the issue of stopping settler attacks on the agenda of the ongoing negotiations in Cairo and Doha, in addition to escalating Palestinian diplomatic and legal activity internationally.

Samour believes that these attacks will increase the intensity of the resistance in the West Bank, which will respond to these crimes.

Not the first crime and will not be the last

Writer and political analyst Dr. Fawzi Ali Al-Samhouri, head of the Juzur Center for Human Rights in Amman, told Al-Quds.com that what happened in the village of Jit is not the first crime, and it will not be the last, because the Israeli terrorist policy is based on committing massacres, and it comes in the context of the war of extermination and ethnic cleansing planned against the Palestinian people and their existence on their land and homeland.

Al-Samhouri pointed out that the settlers storm homes, burn vehicles, open fire, and receive protection from the occupation authorities, whether political or security, which enabled them to escape accountability and punishment.

He added: "In order to confront the Israeli plan, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people must be strengthened, and the settlers must be confronted, given that the targeted areas are Palestinian, in accordance with the Oslo Accords and the decision of the International Court of Justice, which grants the right to all Palestinian people to defend themselves by all internationally guaranteed means."

Stop duplication and selectivity in dealing with crimes

Al-Samhouri explained that the crimes taking place in the cities and villages of the West Bank come within the strategy that began with the war of extermination and comprehensive destruction in the Gaza Strip, and that preparations are being made for this in the West Bank with less intensity and violence, but the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their leadership represented by the PLO, with the support of the Arab brothers and the free people of the world, will abort this plan.

He called for holding the occupation leaders accountable, imposing sanctions on them, and working to isolate them, expressing his rejection of Biden's position, which described the crime as unacceptable, asking: What if the crime had been committed elsewhere, what would be the American position or the position of the European countries?

Al-Samhouri stressed the importance of stopping the duality and selectivity in dealing with the crimes that the Palestinian people have been subjected to, not only over the past months, but also over the previous decades.

Settler attacks supported by the occupation army

Dr. Rifat Sayed Ahmed, strategic expert and director of the Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, told Al-Quds.com that the settlers are not separate from the Israeli entity as a whole, considering it an aggressive entity, and what they are doing is considered a source of pride for this entity, because it is based on the idea of aggression, aggression and killing.

He added: What the settlers are doing in terms of killing, destruction and settlement in the West Bank in general is an expression of the nature of the entity, which is an aggressive settlement entity based on killing, and there is nothing strange about this matter, neither now nor in the future.

Ahmed pointed out that these armed settlers receive protection from the occupation army, noting that the violence and attacks of the settlers in the West Bank always make the Palestinians fearful and anxious, and that it is time for the international community to intervene and put an end to them.

Other goals in the "Karya" in Tel Aviv

For his part, the coordinator of the International Campaign to Defend Jerusalem, Jawdat Manaa, told “I” and “Al-Quds” Dot Com that since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip after October 7, the Israeli political and military leadership has announced the goals of this war, but deep inside the land, where “Al-Kirya” is located in Tel Aviv, there are undeclared goals.

He explained that the goals of the war are summarized in destroying the Palestinian infrastructure, displacing the Palestinian people to build new settlements and expand existing ones, not only in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank, including the Judaization of the city of Jerusalem, because these crimes cannot be committed in Jit, Hawara, Masafer Yatta and other Palestinian villages, in isolation from what is happening in Jerusalem in terms of violations of freedom of worship, the siege of the city’s economy and its separation from the rest of the Palestinian territories.

He touched on three foundations that lead us to understand the nature of the war of extermination that Israel is waging against the Palestinian people: First, Israel is carrying out a double terrorist attack in which the occupation army participates on the one hand and the settlers on the other. Anyone following the results of the attack will not find a difference between them in terms of their terrorist impact and repercussions on the Palestinian people, but what the army is doing is legitimate from their point of view and that of their allies. As for the terrorism of the settlers, the Israeli leadership can criticize it, just as we heard cold criticism of the attack on the village of Jit, unlike the violent operations of the occupation army in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which culminated in extermination.

Stealing Palestinian land by Knesset legislation

Secondly, Israel steals Palestinian lands through legislation from the Knesset, and establishes settlements on them. This aspect of the war is led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who finances the settlement crimes and withholds the Palestinian Authority’s financial rights from its channels to Ramallah. As for Itamar Ben Gvir, the so-called Minister of Internal Security, he plays a different role, especially escalating the aggression against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and monitoring and supporting three terrorist settlement organizations that focus their work in the Holy City, namely “Ateret Cohanim” in the Old City and Al-Wadi, the “Amona” organization in the Sheikh Jarrah and Ras Al-Amud neighborhoods, and the “Elaad” organization in the Moroccan neighborhood to control the neighborhoods of Al-Thawri, Silwan, and Wadi Al-Rababa.

The last person in the equation is Avi Maoz, leader of the conservative religious party Noam, and all of them make up the religious Zionist gang known as the Hardel. Added to these organizations are the “Hilltop Youth,” active in horrific violence in the West Bank, and the “Temple Mount Faithful,” active in attacks in Jerusalem.

Manaa confirmed that there are 65 Zionist terrorist organizations licensed in Israel, some of which receive funding in the United States of America, pointing out that this gang does not operate in isolation from the Israeli government led by the right-wing Netanyahu, who provides it with financial and military cover to support its activities in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Justice for killing Palestinians and acquitting Israelis!

The third and final basis of the war of extermination, according to Manna, is that “Israel is a racist state that relies on killing everyone who is not Jewish, and relies on two justices: the justice of killing Palestinians and the justice of acquitting Israelis, based on two political and religious ideologies that are linked together, contrary to the reality of the historical religious narrative that differs from the reality of the relationship between Muslims and Jews in past centuries.”

Manaa believes that “the complement and driver of the three aforementioned foundations is the occupation army with its military leadership, defense and general staff, and behind it stands the political leadership headed by Netanyahu, who was tasked with the war to annihilate the Gaza Strip and continue invading the cities and villages of the West Bank, and destroying the components of Palestinian life there in preparation for resuming the largest displacement operation since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948.”

Manaa considered what happened in the village of Jit and before it in Hawara to be two terrorist operations par excellence that were carried out by government decisions and with American knowledge, and in the shadow of Arab and Islamic silence, after the Biden administration reversed its decision not to deal with the terrorist triangle of Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Maoz after forming the government.

He said: "Today, in light of the Israeli war of genocide burning the Palestinian people, the leaders of Israel rushed their matter and found on October 7 a pretext for war and to complete the process of separating the Palestinian cities in the West Bank, and stealing the Palestinian lands surrounding the settlements to draw an Israeli map different from what it was before October 7. This requires besieging the Palestinian Authority financially and geographically, controlling the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and eliminating the Palestinian resistance."