In the West Bank, Yinon Levi is not the exception – He’s the system working as intended


Awdah Hathaleen

The Haaretz lead editorial on August 2025:

While the entire world is focusing on what is happening in the Gaza Strip and trying to prevent Israel from seizing control of the entire territory, settlers in the West Bank are taking advantage of the opportunity to tighten the noose around the necks of the Palestinians living there and encourage them to leave “voluntarily.”

The method is consistent: They harass, expel and then take over. The military, the judiciary and the state have no interest in stopping them. On the contrary: Wherever they can lend a hand, they do so.

Look at Yinon Levi. A week after allegedly shooting and killing Awdah Hathaleen, Levi was already back at the border of Umm al-Khair, in the South Hebron Hills, to continue the job of encouraging “voluntary” expulsion. Just a week after the shooting, Levi was standing there again, before members of the community, as if nothing had happened.

Indeed, from Israel’s perspective, nothing had happened. The legal system released Levi overnight, arrested about 20 residents of Umm al-Khair in his place, including one who was injured by a bulldozer operated by settlers just minutes before the shooting, and held Hathaleen’s body for 10 days, as if it were a weapon.

This is a story that sums up the reality of the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime better than any report by B’Tselem. Only in the Israel of apartheid and occupation: The (Jewish) shooter is free, the (Palestinian) victim is in custody, even after his death.

The body – which Israel apparently considers to be more dangerous than the shooter – was held by the Israel Defense Forces for many days. The IDF initially expelled the people in the mourners’ tent.

Although the understandings reached with the family did not restrict the number of participants in the funeral, the military did not let anyone who was not a resident of Umm al-Khair enter the village and it set up checkpoints around it. Control over the lives of Palestinians does not end with their death. Not even death divides the occupier from the occupied.

Meanwhile, on the ground, bulldozers are breaking a water pipe and preparing the land for the expansion of the Carmel settlement. The farmers and children from the village see their future being erased before their eyes, unable to defend themselves, because self-defense by a Palestinian is always “violence,” and the violence of a settler is always “self-defense” (Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Haaretz, Friday).

If you’re looking for a figure that symbolizes today’s Israel, Levi is an ideal candidate. An armed settler, bulldozer at his side, immune to punishment. The military protects him, the police are there only for him, the law is always on his side and the legal system pampers him.

All of this is contrary to international law, which imposes on the occupying power the duty to guarantee the welfare of the population under occupation. Levi is in practice exercising the right of conquest and plunder that the State of Israel grants to Jews as the lords of the land.

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