Israel using the Judea and Samaria militia to enforce Palestinian expulsion

The Haaretz Lead Editorial on 13 August 2026:

Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the IDF Central Command, and Brig. Gen. Niso Guetta, head of the Border Police for the Judea and Samaria District, oversaw the successful completion on Wednesday morning of a complex joint military operation to remove a shade canopy from the yard of a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Qusra.

Previous commitments made it necessary for the force and its senior commanders to quit the site, leaving behind the canopy’s installers and the furniture they brought for a proud new settlement metastasis.

The founders of the new malignant tumor, together with dozens of other settlers who flocked to the area after the military forces left, continued their siege of two Palestinian homes in the village and even tightened it, blocking roads with boulders and tire puncture spikes as well as sabotaging utility lines. At the same time, a reservist force did what the Israel Defense Forces excels at: preventing journalists (and a Palestinian ambulance before that) from reaching the families.

This crime was still continuing as these lines were being written on Wednesday evening. Haaretz reporter Matan Golan quotes a Palestinian resident as saying that the settlers “roam freely around the houses here, and now they’re knocking on the doors. We have no water and little food. We can’t leave the house.” It’s clear that this Judea and Samaria militia is determined to succeed here, just like it did in the nearby village of Jalud. There, after a brutal siege, it drove the Tubasi family from their home, which it now occupies with the arrogance of God’s chosen ones.

Why did the IDF, the Border Police and their top commanders publicly embarrass themselves, suffering such a resounding failure against a gang of pyromaniac criminals who prove their dangerous skills daily? Bluth’s political leanings are no secret: reinforcing Jewish control over as much Palestinian territory as possible. But it must be assumed that if he had been given a clear order, he would have acted like an obedient soldier. The obvious explanation is that the political leadership ordered Bluth and Guetta to fail, and to come out looking ridiculous.

Did the political leaders give the order explicitly, with a wink or by way of insinuation? Maybe we’ll find out, or maybe not. No proof is needed to recognize the settlers are acting in the service of the government’s political and ideological agenda: reducing the Palestinian enclaves to 18 percent of the West Bank’s territory and carrying out mass expulsions, which will be called “emigration.”

Perhaps, in the name of transparency and governability, the army and the settlers will reach a “compromise” in the specific case in Qusra, which will also be to the detriment of the Palestinians. But by showing the settlers’ victory over the army and the Border Police on Wednesday, they and the government are signaling to the Zionist opposition that if they gain a Knesset majority in the next election, it would be unwise to try to restrain them.

Our other misfortune is that a strong faction within that opposition is not genuinely opposed to the current government’s political-ideological goals.

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