TEHRAN – Israeli settlers in the West Bank have launched a campaign against aboriginal Palestinians that is very similar to the fight that one tribe launches against another in a culturally underdeveloped community or society.

Harassment, bullying, provocation, theft, burning houses and farmlands, sexual threats or assaults, cutting irrigation water, plundering belongings, forcing others to leave their place of residence, grabbing their lands, etc. are commonplace in such societies.

There are many examples clearly showing colonial settlers in the West Bank are behaving in this way, of course with a green light from extremist Israeli officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich who live in settlements and the Like Party in general under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For example, settlers have attacked Palestinians in the east of the town of Sa’ir in the Hebron Governorate and stole 300 sheep, the Wafa news agency has reported.

Ahmed al-Shalaldeh, a resident of Jurat al-Khail village, told Wafa that dozens of settlers in military uniforms assaulted residents, seized their phones, destroyed residential caravans and damaged water tanks, before stealing the sheep.

The law of the jungle is dominant in the West Bank. The wrongdoers are not held accountable for their behavior toward the Palestinians.

Saleh Hijazi, a policy coordinator who works to dismantle Israel’s settler-colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid, says Israel is a “settler colony” that is intent on “replacing Indigenous Palestinians with the colonial settlers”.

Hebron residents in the West Bank have also announced a surge in sexual harassment and humiliating treatment at checkpoints. According to testimonies reported by Haaretz, Israeli soldiers have increasingly been sexually harassing Palestinian women at checkpoints in the city of Hebron.

In one incident, a young Palestinian woman said an Israeli soldier exposed himself to her at a checkpoint on 17 August. The woman said she was crossing the checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood when the soldier stopped her and instructed her to open her bag. After she complied, he took down part of his trousers and asked her: “Do you want it? Come and see.” 

"Out of shock, I left the checkpoint and didn't know what was happening, I felt as if someone had given me a slap,” she told Haaretz.

The act of savagery and indecency has risen to an extent that even 

Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote on August 22 to ministers warning that settlers in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to Israel. He acknowledged that settlers have been emboldened by light-handed law enforcement.

In a report on its website, the BBC reported that settler harassment has forced Palestinians out of at least 18 villages in the West Bank in 10 months. The BBC also says extremist officials in Israel are happy with the land grab, believing it will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

The way the settlers are behaving toward the West Bankers is a clear instance of modern barbarity by an ultra-Orthodox community of land grabbers against a helpless nation with the help and greenlight of Israeli rulers. In the midst of this barbarism the Western countries, whose claim of support for human rights has deafened the world, just express concern without taking any step.