Kobar, Occupied West Bank — In the town of Kobar, northwest of Ramallah, a settler known to locals as “Ghazal” has been attacking Palestinian farmers, they allege, part of an ongoing Israeli pogrom in the West Bank targeting Palestinians. Bassema Khader, 63, whose family owns a farm in the al-Daak area, recognised him even when he arrived wearing a mask. “A settler known as ‘Ghazal’ has been coming to the area for a long time, wearing an army uniform to intimidate people,” Khader told Al Jazeera. “But the residents weren’t afraid and continued to hold on to their land.” “Almost every day, he would fire shots and steal sheep and solar panels. He would approach cars, knock on the doors, and demand the keys, claiming he was from the army and saying, ‘I am army’,” she said. When Khader confronted him as he attempted to steal her sheep, he called for backup. “He told me: ‘Wait, the [Israeli] Border Police are coming.’ And they did.
With their help, he took all the sheep and brought them to the settlement,” Khader recounted. “The goal is to steal, to frighten and terrorise people, to stop them from reaching their land, and ultimately to empty the al-Daak area,” she said. For Palestinians, the stakes of this escalating violence are existential. Mohammad Majdi Abu Makho, a Palestinian from Deir Jarir, northeast of Ramallah, was run over by a settler’s vehicle and pepper-sprayed while praying near his village entrance on December 25, 2025. “For me, the land is life. It truly is everything,” Abu Makho told Al Jazeera. “What does a farmer – or anyone – have other than their land?
It gives us a sense of belonging. It is our identity.” Abu Makho said the settler routinely brought sheep to the town’s entrance, prompting residents to try to drive him away. But, he said, the settler would start firing indiscriminately. Abu Makho later pursued the case through the Israeli legal system.
The Israeli military confirmed after the incident that the settler was an army reservist, and said he had also opened fire inside Deir Jarir earlier that day while wearing civilian clothes. His weapon was confiscated and his reserve service suspended while the incidents were investigated. This blurring of lines between civilian settlers and the military can frequently turn deadly. On April 11, 2026, 23-year-old Ali Majed Hamadneh was killed in Deir Jarir.
According to a statement issued that day by the Israeli military, forces were dispatched following reports of Palestinians throwing stones at an Israeli. “The reserve soldier carried out a suspect arrest procedure that included firing into the air and then firing at one of the stone-throwers,” the military stated, adding that the suspect was injured and his death was later determined. However, a press release issued by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem on April 13 presented a sharply different account. B’Tselem reported that two settlers from the Oranim Farm outpost brought their sheep to graze on Deir Jarir farmland, and when residents tried to drive them away, two more settlers arrived. “One of them, a soldier on reserve duty in a military Regional Defence Battalion, launched a massive volley of shots and the residents began to flee,” B’Tselem stated. “One of the bullets hit Ali Hamadneh, 23, in the back while he was running away and posed no danger”. B’Tselem’s investigation directly contradicted the army, finding “that there were no military forces at the scene other than the settler on reserve duty who fired the shots”.
According to B’Tselem, settler militias have killed at least 35 Palestinians since October 2023. The structural integration of settlers into the Israeli military apparatus accelerated rapidly after the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. An August 9 report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Israeli military had called up some 5,500 West Bank settlers as reservists and assigned them to regional defence battalions after the war started. According to the Haaretz report, soldiers operating in the West Bank testified that members of these battalions often operate with broad autonomy, at times disregarding the authority of regular military commanders.
One commander told Haaretz: “They tell you quite openly that they’re the lords of the land here, and that’s really how it feels on the ground”. Another reserve commander was quoted saying: “Everything else was about dealing with Jews looking for provocations”. Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Israeli government had expanded settlers’ security and military roles. She noted that the Israeli government bolstered the security role of settlers through reserve call-ups and the creation of rapid response squads whose members were equipped with special police powers.
This effectively led to “arming settlers in the West Bank and militarising them at unprecedented levels”, Sanbar told Al Jazeera. Bashar Qaryouti, an anti-settlement activist south of Nablus, explained the dual role this can give individual settlers. “This gives a settler more than one role in the same place,” Qaryouti said. “He has a direct interest in expanding the settlement, while his military service gives him weapons, experience and connections within the Israeli military system.” This growing overlap between settlers and Israeli security structures has drawn international scrutiny. In May 2026, the European Union imposed sanctions on the Israeli organisation Hashomer Yosh and its president, Avichai Suissa. The EU said Hashomer Yosh provided material support and coordinated volunteers at herding farms “supporting at least 28 violent outposts and settlements in the West Bank”.
It also said the organisation recruited armed volunteers and provided guards involved in violent attacks. “Hashomer Yosh supports pastoral outposts and provides them with volunteers and guards around Qaryut, al-Mughayyir, and other Palestinian areas,” Qaryouti explained. He added that Suissa was “known to locals for his support of the outposts and settler groups in Qaryut” and alleged that he had participated in an attack on the town on March 2, during which the brothers Mohammad and Fahim Muammar were killed and three other Palestinians were injured. The integration of settlers into military structures has also complicated accountability. Sanbar explained that it can be difficult for a Palestinian victim to determine the official capacity of their attacker at the time of the assault.
That uncertainty exists alongside low rates of criminal investigation and indictment when Palestinians make complaints against Israeli soldiers. According to the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, “77.3 percent of complaints concerning suspected soldiers’ offences against Palestinians are closed with no criminal investigation”. The organisation analysed 2,427 complaints brought to the military between 2016 and 2024. Out of these, only 552 criminal investigations were opened (22.7 percent), and just 23 indictments were served, representing 0.9 percent of all complaints.
Furthermore, processing for nearly half the complaints took two to five years. “By refraining from treating complaints submitted to it promptly, effectively and with due gravitas, the Military Advocate General’s Corps sends a clear message to soldiers that the army condones violence, looting property, beating, wounding or even killing Palestinians in the West Bank,” Yesh Din concluded.
