US delivers 'tough talk' to Israeli officials over West Bank escalation

TEL AVIV — Shocking settler violence against West Bank Palestinians has polarized Israeli society and antagonized an already exasperated Biden administration.

Israel’s top three security officials issued a joint communique on Saturday condemning the recent rampaging by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. “These attacks go against every moral and Jewish value and are nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term, and we are obliged to fight them,” wrote Israel’s top soldier Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet security agency head Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai. 

Their use of the term "nationalist terrorism," almost always reserved for Palestinian violence against Israelis, found widespread condemnation among settlers and the government ministers who back them. 

“It is as if the government supports the settlers rather than the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet,” a former senior defense official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. 

National Missions Minister Orit Struk of the Religious Zionism party, herself a settler, went as far as to call the security agency heads “the Wagner Group” in a radio interview. She subsequently apologized for equating them with the notorious Russian mercenaries, but said she stands by her condemnation of equating settlers with terrorists. 

Her remarks reflect widespread sentiment within Israeli society, including top government figures. Responding to the murder of four Israelis by Palestinian gunmen in near the Eli West Bank settlement last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged his fellow settlers to “run and settle on the hills and everywhere possible.”

The latest developments could have widespread repercussions. They prompted some tough talk by Assistant US Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Barbara Leaf in meetings in Israel this week with national security adviser Tzahi Hanegbi, Foreign Ministry Director Ronen Levy, the Defense Ministry’s top liaison with the Palestinians Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian and others. 

While a bland government statement read, “The sides discussed ways to prevent security escalation in the area,” officials privy to the talks told Al-Monitor that Leaf warned that the United States senses a loss of control.

"She also spoke about changing the government's policy regarding the construction of more settlements, focusing on the increasing violence of the settlers,” one official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. While emphasizing the US commitment to Israel's security and expressing sorrow over the killing of four settlers, Leaf also warned that the increasing settler violence jeopardizes US efforts to rope additional Arab states into peace agreements with Israel, especially Saudi Arabia. 

Leaf’s criticism joins a slew of recent protests by senior US officials made both publicly and in private conversations with Hanegbi, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Foreign Ministry officials and others.

"They are furious over the approval of thousands of additional construction units in the occupied territories," a senior Israeli political source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, referring to this week’s green light for the construction of over 5,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements. 

"They are outraged by the violence, by what appears to be a loss of control over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, by the fact that growing groups of extremist settlers are raiding Palestinian villages and carrying out collective punishment. They emphasize to their Israeli counterparts that the US will not be able to back this behavior for much longer, and Israel will not be able to maintain its status as a state of law and democracy with basic protection for minorities if this deterioration continues."

The violence and the accelerated settlement construction have already affected Israel’s standing in the region. Last week, Morocco announced it was postponing the meeting of the Negev Forum it was scheduled to host this summer.

"At the moment, in light of Israel's announcement of the momentum of building permits in the settlements, we see no intention of holding such a conference," a senior Israeli official who participated in the first Negev forum in Israel last year told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. 

At the Financial Pact summit in Paris last week, Saudi Arabia held a PR event to promote its candidacy for hosting Expo 2030. Israeli diplomats were invited but were denied entry at the door.

"It was probably a last-minute decision because of the announcement of settlement construction," a senior Israeli diplomat told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity in describing the embarrassing incident. "Israel's problem is strategic and it will keep deteriorating. Israel's image as the most important ally of the United States in the Middle East and perhaps in the world is under great strain. Everyone understands this and sees it.”

The diplomat added that US Ambassador Tom Nides, who played a key role in discrete messaging between the sides and calming ruffled feathers, leaves his post next month. “It will take a long time to appoint a replacement. In the vacuum created, the Americans will be forced to send condemnations by megaphone from Washington, and this will continue to deteriorate the understanding that Israel and Washington are inseparable allies," he said.

Most troubling for Israel’s standing and diplomacy, the prospects of change in Israeli policy are negligible. 

"Netanyahu is a prisoner in the hands of the extremist elements in his government," a senior Israeli political source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "He cannot order the IDF, the police and the Shin Bet to take the necessary action to eradicate settler violence [when] the direct representatives of these people are members of his government and could topple it. He must feed the monster. He wanted a fully-fledged right-wing government, and now he has to pay the price."

The settlers, too, have become more radicalized. "Whereas the violent and messianic elements were once located on the extreme fringes of the settlement movement, this group has expanded greatly and is now almost mainstream," a former senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor.

Israel’s last remaining sacred cows are being slaughtered, with extremist settlers confronting members of the IDF and the Shin Bet, who risk their lives to protect them against Palestinian violence. This week, settlers chased off a brigade commander, Col. Eliav Elbaz, who came to pay a condolence call at the home of one of the four Israelis murdered last week with calls of “murderer” and “traitor.”

The political power and public support now enjoyed by the settlement enterprise, facilitated by Israel’s most extreme government ever, makes it a real threat to Israeli governance and sovereignty.