Israeli army, settlers unite in collective punishment of Al-Mughayyir
Bulldozers operated by Israeli settlers and soldiers uproot olive trees near the village of Al-Mughayyir, in the occupied West Bank, 23 August 2025
Oren Ziv and Shatha Yaish report in +972 on 27 August 2025:
On Friday, August 22, a convoy of bulldozers rolled into the olive groves of Al-Mughayyir, a Palestinian village east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Most were civilian machines operated by settlers, with several armored military bulldozers in support. By Sunday, thousands of olive trees, many of them decades old and belonging to local families, had been torn from the ground.
The order came from Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command. Officially, the destruction was part of a manhunt for a Palestinian gunman who had allegedly opened fire on Israeli settlers grazing sheep on the village’s land, wounding one before fleeing. The army claimed the uprooting was meant to clear potential hiding places. Yet Bluth himself soon revealed that the true aim lay elsewhere.
“Every village and every enemy must know that if they carry out an attack against the residents [settlers], they will pay a heavy price,” Bluth declared during a briefing at the site. “They will experience a curfew, they will experience a siege, and they will experience shaping operations.”
“Shaping operations” is the army’s euphemism for a policy of physically re-engineering areas where Palestinian resistance has emerged. Earlier this year, the tactic was applied in refugee camps across the northern West Bank, where soldiers demolished hundreds of homes, displaced tens of thousands of residents, and leveled structures to ease military access — leaving three camps, one in Jenin and two in Tulkarem, effectively deserted.
In Al-Mughayyir, Bluth’s words were quickly put into practice. Bulldozers razed the groves while soldiers imposed a siege and stormed homes. “We are now getting a grip on this village,” Bluth said. “The first mission is to hunt [the assailant] … The second is to carry out shaping operations here, and to ensure that everyone is deterred — not only this village, but every village that tries to raise a hand against the residents [settlers].”
Palestinians survey the devastation after settlers and soldiers uprooted thousands of olive trees in Al-Mughayyir, occupied West Bank, 24 August 2025
Following Bluth’s remarks, two leading Israeli human rights groups, Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, demanded that the Military Advocate General open a criminal investigation into the general on suspicion of war crimes. In its petition to the court, Yesh Din argued that Bluth’s order was patently illegal “because it directly contradicts the provisions of international law which prohibit harm to private property and collective punishment,” and because the residents “were not given the opportunity to appeal [the move].”
ACRI, meanwhile, asserted that “war crimes and crimes against humanity [have become] a daily matter in the West Bank,” and warned that the army’s “doctrine of ‘there are no non-involved [individuals]’ that was first implemented in Gaza has reached the West Bank and given the name ‘shaping operations.’”