‘Lords of the land’: Israeli soldiers describe how settlers manage military reality in the West Bank

A masked settler in uniform near the village of Ras Ein al-Auja in January 2026, after all its residents fled due to settler violence

Yaniv Kubovich writes in Haaretz on 9 August 2026:

During his second tour of reserve duty in the West Bank during the war, G., an officer and startup manager, encountered a recurring problem: youths from a nearby hava, or farm, essentially a small settler outpost, repeatedly entered the homes of Palestinian families in nearby villages.

“They’d go in, sit in their living rooms and make a mess,” says G., who commanded a platoon in the South Hebron Hills in 2024 and is currently a deputy company commander in the same area. According to G., one day his unit received a call from a Palestinian family reporting a settler attack, and he and his soldiers went to the scene. When he demanded that the youths leave, they set their dog on him, and it tried to bite him.

According to G., a man accompanying the youths, who said he was a member of the regional defense battalion and the owner of the nearby farm outpost, threatened that if G. filed a complaint with his commanders, the youths would accuse him of sexually harassing them. G. says the entire incident was documented on his body camera and that he did report it, but received no backing from senior commanders. On the contrary.

“The next day, the brigade commander called the settler to appease him. He wasn’t willing to speak with me,” G. says. “Afterward, my company commander and battalion commander organized a sulha – a reconciliation meeting – saying that members of the regional defense battalions ‘are doing holy work.'”

‘We’re not thwarting terror. It’s nonsense,’ says D., a reserve commander. ‘During our entire tour of duty, there were maybe two arrests of people defined as Hamas-linked terror operatives in Hebron. Everything else was about dealing with Jews looking for provocations.’

Soldiers stand behind a settler throwing stones at Palestinians during the olive harvest in the village of Beita in October. Credit: FP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh
The incident occurred four days before the end of his reserve duty. G. thought about his family and the company he manages and decided not to file a complaint. “I was probably wrong,” he admits, “but there was tacit support from the brigade commander, and the message was clear: An officer can endure threats, an attempted assault and humiliation – but he can’t get into a conflict with the outpost. That’s why most people’s attitude is simply, ‘Let me finish this and get back to my life.'”

The incident G. describes is not unusual. Other testimonies from commanders and soldiers in regular and reserve service who have served in the West Bank since October 7 describe a reality in which the line between the army and the regional defense battalions, made up of local settlers called up for reserve duty, has become blurred.

In conversations with Haaretz, the soldiers, two of whom also gave testimonies to Breaking the Silence – an Israeli NGO founded by former combat soldiers to collect and publish testimonies regarding military actions in Palestinian territories – say that members of the regional defense battalions allow themselves to operate as an independent force, sometimes alongside other civilians.

The army battalions that are supposed to command them struggle, or do not dare, to set boundaries. Soldiers who try to enforce orders sometimes find themselves becoming targets, while senior commanders prefer to appease the settlers.

‘Every time we arrived, they were already there,’ says H., a soldier who served in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. ‘They never reported anything in advance over the radio. We would always arrive and find them already there, not trying to calm things down, but as part of the problem.’

A settler and soldiers near the village of Tell last weekend. G., a reserve commander: “Most people’s attitude is simply, ‘Let me finish this and get back to my life.'” Credit: Ammar Awad/Reuters
Alongside their frustration and sense of helplessness, the testimonies reveal a crisis of trust that has led soldiers to question the purpose of their mission.

“We’re not thwarting terror. It’s nonsense,” says D., a reserve commander. “During our entire tour of duty, there were maybe two arrests of people defined as Hamas-linked terror operatives in Hebron. Everything else was about dealing with Jews looking for provocations. We’re doing guard-dog work: manning the fence in Gaza and patrolling the West Bank. All day long we’re running after settlers from one incident to the next, and they disregard us. They see you as a servant, as if they’re doing you a favor by letting you guard them.”

Their goal: create friction with the Palestinians
After October 7, the army recruited some 5,500 West Bank settlers into regional defense battalions to serve as reservists in their settlements and near neighboring Palestinian villages. Testimonies soon began to accumulate about the involvement of regional defense battalion members in acts of violence, threats and the destruction of Palestinian property. As early as January 2024, a security source told Haaretz that it had been decided to restrict their activities to the settlements and, at least officially, require the approval of a brigade commander for any activity outside them. But the reality on the ground was, and remains, different.

In March of this year, for example, three Palestinians were killed by gunfire in two incidents involving settlers from a regional defense battalion. In April, a regional defense battalion soldier shot and killed a Palestinian in the village of Deir Jarir, near Ramallah. And in May, a regional defense battalion soldier who, according to soldiers’ testimonies, was drunk opened fire indiscriminately on Palestinian homes in the nearby Al-Aroub refugee camp.

הארץ חדשות
@haaretznewsvid·Follow
מתנחלים מאיימים בנשק על פלסטינים בדרום הר חברון

5:48 PM · Mar 7, 2026

32
Reply

Settlers threaten Palestinians with guns in the southern Hebron Hills in March.
Under IDF orders, regional defense battalions are subordinate to the battalion and brigade operating in the area at the time. But soldiers’ testimonies repeatedly indicate that members of the regional defense battalions do not accept the authority of the commanders above them.

N., a reservist who has served hundreds of days since the start of the war, recounts how, during his service in the South Hebron Hills, his unit noticed a farm outpost taking shape on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Susya. First, youths arrived with flocks of sheep, followed by pickup trucks, equipment and cattle.

“We had no doubt where this was going,” he says. “Their goal was to create friction with the Palestinians.” According to N., the company commander reported what was happening to the battalion commander and even warned that the unit could not protect the encampment, but was instructed to “prevent confrontations.”

When the commander asked for the encampment to be evacuated and warned that the friction could end with a Palestinian or a settler being killed, the brigade initially refused and preferred to wait for the Border Police. Approval was given only after youths attacked a Palestinian man with stones, severely wounding him in the head.

Related Articles
Erased: Israeli settlers’ brutal war on Palestinian communities in the West Bank Hagar Shezaf
‘We don’t want Palestinians to become fuel for Israel’s election campaign’ Jack Khoury
Israeli forces withdraw from Palestinian refugee camp after two-day operation Jack Khoury
N.’s unit arrived at the encampment and began evacuating it when a military pickup truck carrying members of the regional defense battalion appeared. “There was a soldier at the entrance who tried to stop them, but they ignored him and kept going. The pickup truck literally ran over his leg,” N. says. “They got out and started confronting us, asking, ‘What are you doing? Why are you evacuating them?’ Then they started threatening us. It shows how distorted the reality has become: People in uniform, carrying weapons and driving a military vehicle, were trying to prevent the IDF from carrying out a mission ordered by its commanders.”

Around that time, a video circulated on social media showing a settler arriving at a Palestinian village and beating a local resident as two armed soldiers stood beside him.

“We knew it was in our sector, but the soldiers weren’t from our battalion and we didn’t recognize them, so we realized they were from the regional defense battalion,” N. says. “You see this guy brutally beating a Palestinian. There are Palestinians standing around, but they can’t do anything because there are armed soldiers next to him.”

According to N., only after the soldiers contacted the company commander and pressed the issue did the brigade begin investigating the incident. The brigade told them that some of the regional defense force’s powers had been restricted and that the settler who carried out the assault had been detained by police and released several hours later.

According to N., on the day the encampment was evacuated, it turned out that the same settler was among those who arrived in the military pickup truck and threatened the soldiers. “That evening, the brigade commander called this settler, who it turns out owns a farm outpost near Susya and is a well-known figure in the area, and made a sulha with him,” N. says. “With us, by the way, he didn’t speak.”

The settlement of Susya in April 2023, with the city of Yatta in the background. Credit: Eliahu Hershkovitz
According to testimonies, members of regional defense battalions and other settlers sometimes set up checkpoints without authorization or coordination with the battalion to which they are subordinate.

“They pull Palestinians out of their cars, make them lie on the road, even on hot days when the asphalt is scorching, handcuff them and take their cars apart, supposedly to search them, but really they just take everything out,” says L., a soldier who served in the West Bank. “Jews, of course, pass through these checkpoints freely.”

“Regional defense battalion members wear uniforms and carry military weapons. From the Palestinians’ perspective, they are IDF soldiers in every respect, even if they’re acting without authorization and in violation of orders or the law,” says a commander who recently served in northern Samaria.

An armed settler in partly civilian clothing overlooks Nablus from the West Bank settlement of Mount Ebal in April. Credit: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP
The testimonies indicate that members of the regional defense battalions repeatedly arrive at scenes of confrontation before the army. “Every time we arrived, they were already there,” says H., a soldier who served in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. “They never reported anything in advance over the radio. We would always arrive and find them already there, not trying to calm things down, but as part of the problem.”

H. and other soldiers point to a problematic dual role. On the one hand, members of the regional defense battalions are soldiers and therefore have military authority and resources. On the other, as residents of the settlements, they have ties to people involved in some of the violent confrontations and often act to protect them, even when they are the source of friction and violence against Palestinians.

A settler and soldiers at the entrance to Ramallah in July. “They see you as a servant,” says one soldier. Credit: Zain Jaafar/AFP
According to H., members of the regional defense battalions move freely around bases and outposts, enter operations rooms and have access to operational reports and sensitive information. He believes this allows them to know where IDF activity is planned, which forces are deployed in each sector and which Palestinians have filed complaints about violent incidents. Soldiers are concerned that military information is being passed on to civilians.

M., a commander who completed a tour of operational duty in northern Samaria, describes looting that took place in front of his soldiers near a checkpoint on Mount Ebal, north of the Palestinian city of Nablus, where confiscated Palestinian vehicles were parked. According to him, settlers arrived and began stripping parts from the vehicles. When a soldier asked what they were doing, they replied, “What do you mean? We’re taking it. It’s ours.” They added that they had rabbinical approval because it was “spoils of war” and threatened him: “Get the hell out of here before there’s trouble.”

Soldiers block Palestinians from accessing an area near the West Bank town of Qabalan, where settlers established an outpost. “It’s as if they’re doing you a favor by letting you guard them,” says one soldier. Credit: Majdi Mohammed/AP
M. also witnessed an incident in which, he says, a settlement’s security coordinator fired at a shepherd who posed no threat to anyone. “The shepherd was far away. There was no threat, and he just stood there and fired at him from inside the settlement, through the fence. What did they do? They confiscated his weapon like you confiscate a kid’s phone at school, then gave it back two weeks later,” he recounts. “This wasn’t just a lenient punishment. It showed that even unjustified shooting wasn’t enough for the commanders to ask whether the shooter should even be carrying a military weapon.”

According to testimonies, members of the regional defense battalions also join arrests and military operations, not always in coordination with the army.

“They come with us, sometimes partly in civilian clothes, as if they’re an integral part of the battalion,” says R., a commander who served in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. “A lot of the time, civilians from the settlements join in too, without any coordination or identification. They enter Palestinian homes, and no one says a word to them. Some of them aren’t combat soldiers at all and don’t know the operational procedures, and more than once it has nearly ended in friendly fire. They tell you quite openly that they’re the lords of the land here, and that’s really how it feels on the ground.”

Haaretz Podcast with Amos Harel: ‘Trump started a war with no plan. Now he doesn’t know how to end it’
This sense of ownership is not limited to military operations. T., a soldier who recently completed a tour of duty in the Nablus area, recounts how one day, after a pipe burst at an outpost, he shut off the water supply to stop the flooding.

“Within an hour, a settler showed up asking, ‘Who shut off the water?’ At first I thought he was our gate guard. I told him, ‘Listen, there’s a burst pipe here.’ He says to me, ‘You shut off the water to me and my family.’ Then he points and says, ‘I live up there on the hill, and I’m connected to this pipe.’ I said, ‘Wait, what do you mean? You get your water from the IDF outpost?’ And he says, ‘Yes, that’s the arrangement here,’ and started getting angry and mouthing off.”

According to T., the fact that private civilian infrastructure had been connected to army infrastructure without oversight or regulated payment did not lead to any action against the settler. He believes the unauthorized water connection is still in place.

The road to the settlement of Carmel, which runs through the Palestinian village Umm al-Khair, where Awdah Hathaleen was shot dead by a settler as a road was constructed from Carmel to a new outpost. N.: “The whole company came away feeling terrible. The area was our responsibility, and we didn’t prevent it.” Credit: Itai Ron
The relationship between the army and members of the regional defense battalions is sometimes built on personal ties. Settlers invite soldiers and commanders to meals and foster a sense of partnership. But according to the soldiers, that partnership repeatedly proves false, concealing a constant struggle for control of the area and an ongoing erosion of military authority. At the same time, the closeness cultivated by the settlers makes it even harder for soldiers to set clear boundaries. Perhaps that is why settlers feel at home even on military outposts.

“One Friday, I went to the battalion kitchen to pick up a Shabbat meal for my platoon and saw a regional defense battalion member loading up 30 or 40 portions,” M. recounts. “I asked who the food was for, and he said, ‘On Shabbat, all the youths from the farm outposts and the families like to sit down for a meal together.’ That drove me crazy. A reserve cook is supposed to cook for the battalion using the provisions the battalion receives, and this guy lives at home, sleeps at home and comes to take food for his entire family. The feeling is that you owe them everything.”

According to N., one of the incidents that left the strongest impression on him and his comrades occurred in late July 2025, when Awdah Hathaleen, a resident of the village of Umm al-Khair, was shot dead. The settler Yinon Levi shot Hathaleen after entering the village armed with his personal weapon to escort tractors paving a road to the Carmel settlement.

According to N., the work had been authorized, but the forces in the sector had not been notified in advance, even though it was a volatile situation that had already led to confrontations. When residents resisted, Levi raised his pistol and fired.

Hathaleen, who was filming the incident from about 30 meters away (about 100 feet), was hit and killed. This week, a year after the shooting, the State Prosecutor’s Office announced that Levi had been indicted.

After the incident, the state held Hathaleen’s body for nine days, while the soldiers were tasked with “restoring calm to the sector.” According to N., at night they were sent on “mapping operations” in villages in the area.

An armed settler overlooks the West Bank village of Tell last weekend. Soldiers fear that members of the regional defense battalions are passing military information to civilians. Credit: Majdi Mohammed/AP
“We go into people’s homes, wake them up, put the women and children in one room and the men in another, take their ID cards, photograph them and conduct searches,” he says. “We knew we weren’t going to find anything. Information on all the residents was already in the IDF’s systems. We didn’t see any intelligence or operational value in it. It was clear that the purpose was to harass the Palestinians and make sure they kept their heads down. The whole company came away feeling terrible, with a sense of failure. People were killed and injured, and it happened on the state’s watch, in an area that was our responsibility, and we didn’t prevent it.”

“This isn’t a job for reservists”
Soldiers who tried to remove violent settlers often found there was no one to enforce the law. According to N., for most of their tour of duty, they did not know they had the authority to detain or arrest violent settlers. They were only informed of this toward the end of their tour. Instead, soldiers were required to call the police after every violent incident. “But there’s only one patrol car for the entire sector, and it comes from Be’er Sheva, so sometimes it took more than an hour to arrive. In the meantime, incidents escalated and people were hurt,” N. says.

“The two officers who came knew the area and the troublemakers and sometimes managed to remove them, but it makes no sense for a single patrol car with two officers to have to go from one incident to another across the entire South Hebron Hills.”

of Sinjil, north of Ramallah. Credit: Zain Jaafar/AFP
In the absence of police, the army is required to separate the two sides, but soldiers are not given clear authority and are not well versed in the law. As a result, commanders sometimes prefer to keep waiting for the police rather than intervene. “This isn’t a job for reservists,” one commander says. “You can’t expect reservists to start physically confronting the Jews there. It’s a situation they don’t know how to handle.”

According to the soldiers, the situation also affects their motivation to continue serving in the West Bank. They do not want to abandon their mission of protecting settlement residents, but they find it difficult to accept a reality in which the people they were sent to protect interfere with their operations, threaten them, use army resources and needlessly endanger them. The result is a deeply problematic relationship in which it is no longer clear who is giving the orders.

“They know that battalions rotate every few months and that they’ll still be there,” G. says. “Everyone thinks, ‘All right, let’s finish this and get out of here.’ But even after you leave, the incidents stay with you.”

“We go back to our families and our jobs with a sense of failure,” N. concludes. “We failed to protect innocent Palestinians; we gave up. When a state sends soldiers to protect an area and, at the same time, allows others to make it clear who really runs the show, that’s a failure, not just a disciplinary or operational one, but an ethical one. There’s a Wild West of settler violence against Palestinians there. There’s no reason this should be the reality, or that IDF soldiers should be part of it.”

This article is reproduced in its entirety