Ilham Karajeh awoke last Friday to find her family allotment raided and ruined. The thin black irrigation pipes had been sliced, grape vines cut, and 70 young olive trees uprooted. "See – they are still wet with sap," she cried out in horror at the cruelty of the act.
Attack in Ein Arik
The attack in Ein Arik came in the middle of the night and targeted the rudiments of life: earth, water, roots, and seedlings. There was no doubt in this West Bank village about the perpetrators. Since a new settler outpost was established last year on a neighbouring hill, violence has flowed down into the valleys in a gathering tide.
The outpost, now called Maoz Tzur, began with just a handful of Israeli settlers but quickly set about seizing territory. Their first target was the Bedouin shepherd community on surrounding hills and valleys. Then pressure was turned up on villagers, who for more than a year have been prevented from reaching family olive and citrus groves and springs on hillsides to the south, nearest the new outpost. Those brave enough to venture that direction were repeatedly attacked with clubs and stones.
Acceleration Before Elections
The night attack reflects an acceleration in the intimidation campaign around Ein Arik, extending northwards towards the neighbouring village of Deir Ibzi. It is part of a surge of settler aggression across the West Bank driven by the dynamics of Israeli politics. Elections loom, due by the end of October, and Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right bloc faces potential defeat after more than three years of political domination. Radical settler elements in the coalition are scrambling to impose facts on the ground before the vote.
"These are going to be very tough months," said Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an advocacy group monitoring settlement growth. "Firstly, it doesn't look good for the current coalition, so there could be a new government. Secondly, all the attention is on the elections so the settlers can use this period to do whatever they want."
Farm Outposts Drive Land Seizure
Throughout 2025 and the first half of this year, de facto annexation of the West Bank has accelerated, driven primarily by farm outposts such as Maoz Tzur. These require none of the planning and construction work of established settlements, just a small, highly motivated vanguard ready to use violence to drive Palestinians over a wide swath of territory.
According to a report published Monday by Kerem Navot and Peace Now, farm outposts now control more than 1 million dunams (100,000 hectares), 18% of the entire West Bank. Nearly a third of that seizure took place in 2025 alone. The report concludes that "the government has advanced de facto annexation at an unprecedented pace" through structural governance changes, settlement expansion, retroactive authorisation of outposts, land seizures, expulsion of Palestinian communities, and increased Israeli control in areas previously under Palestinian Authority responsibility.
The report argues that at its heart, the process relies on sustained violence: "These amount to thousands of incidents, ranging from verbal abuse to murder. The vast majority are neither documented nor counted by any authority. This violence is part of a funded and institutionalised system whose purpose is to expel Palestinians and take over their land."
Smotrich's Role
At the top of this system sits Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline settler now finance minister with power far wider than his title suggests. He has taken over authority to approve settlements from the defence ministry and used it to retroactively legitimise farm outposts like Maoz Tzur. In April, Smotrich visited Maoz Tzur to celebrate its recognition as an official settlement, hailing its 12 "core families" as "pioneers". Outposts like Maoz Tzur, he said, would "completely destroy the idea of a Palestinian state within our heartland".
The settlers of Maoz Tzur have no near-term prospect of taking over the Karajehs' plot. The aim appears to be to demoralise the population while isolating them by blocking roads between Palestinian communities with steel gates or stone blocks, and overlaying them with new roads accessible only to settlers, connecting the new outposts. "When you connect something, you always dissect something else – that's the principle they act on," Etkes said.
Legal Recourse Cut Off
Recourse to the law has been cut off almost entirely for Palestinians, since another settler extremist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was made national security minister. Villagers in Ein Arik said it has proved futile to complain to police or go to court. "We went to so many lawyers but they all said there is nothing they could do as the government is with the settlers," said Ahmad Abu Mayala, whose family was attacked on 22 May. "They said: 'Wait for the election to see if it will change the government. Then maybe we can do something'."
Local mayor Mohannad Othman was pessimistic: "The way things in the Middle East work, there will be someone even worse than Smotrich," he said, though he speculated that if Palestinian Israeli parties acted together, they could hold the balance of power after elections. Othman is considering inviting foreign embassy representatives to accompany villagers for the olive harvest in the hope of protection.
Last month, the UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Norway imposed sanctions on what they called "networks" behind "horrific levels of settler violence". France also banned Smotrich from entering the country; he was banned from the UK in 2020. Such measures are unlikely to have significant impact while the Israeli government has support from the Trump administration, which opposes formal annexation but allows informal seizures, and there is disunity within the EU.
Without sustained external pressure, Etkes is pessimistic about how much a new Israeli government could do to hold back settler violence. "Any attempt to change policies in the West Bank will be confronted with very strong opposition of the people who are today in the government, who will be out there in the field with strong political back-up. So it would be very, very hard for any new Israeli government to try to reverse things."
