Tribal war against West Bankers

TEHRAN: Residents of the West Bank are facing a kind of brutal tribal war initiated by violent Israeli settlers and soldiers.

Tribal wars are like the law of the jungle, where no rules of war are respected. In this tribal war, the Palestinians in the West Bank are defenseless and defenceless. They live in constant fear.

While the world’s attention is focused on Israel’s unimaginably cruel war in the Gaza Strip, cruel settlers are wreaking havoc in the West Bank.

Residents of the West Bank are being driven from their homes and fields; their farms are being destroyed; their sheep are being stolen and communities of shepherds are being forced to flee; their houses and cars are being set on fire; their fields and crops are being destroyed by untreated sewage from the settlements, etc.

Injustice against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is nothing new. However, it has worsened since the Gaza war began in October last year. During this time, 528 Palestinians, including 133 children, were killed by Israeli security forces or settlers.

Israel is committing war crimes not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank.

“In the West Bank, the United Nations (Independent International) Commission of Inquiry for the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israeli forces committed acts of sexual violence, torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, as well as violations of personal dignity, all of which constitute war crimes,” the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a June 12 report.

While the United States and the European Union have announced sanctions against violent settlers in the West Bank, they have so far refused to target key tribal leaders, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and settlement financier Bezalel Smotrich.

So far, only Benzi Gopstein, a quintessential tribal war criminal and close ally of Ben Gvir, has faced symbolic sanctions from the Biden administration and the European Union.

While the extremist Hutus killed over 800,000 civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank treated the Palestinians like subhumans. For decades they were humiliated, intimidated, expelled, arrested, abused and killed.

What the settlers are doing to Palestinians in the West Bank is in many ways similar to what the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the military and others are doing against civilians in Sudan’s West Darfur and the Rohingya population in Myanmar.