Being settlers. What lies behind Israel’s front line

Forget the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Lebanese Party of God, Hamas (“it is ready for non-violence”, as reported by La Repubblica on 23 August), the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, all the popular fronts from the river to the sea, the Salafis and the emirs of Doha. Peace in the Middle East has only one obstacle: the Israeli settlers.

No one constructs negative archetypes of the Turkish settler in Northern Cyprus, the Russian settler in the Donbas or the Chinese settler in Tibet. These are occupations to be glossed over by newspaper editors and ‘the beautiful people’ like Mark Ruffalo, who pins on his badge. Only the Jewish settler has become a malevolent figure. He makes no apology for existing, speaks none of the ‘woke’ language of colonial guilt, does not regard the land as a metaphor, does not turn the other cheek, and prefers walls to bridges. Among the settlers are well-off families from the French and British aliyah, Messianics with braids, secular nationalists who arrived after the Yom Kippur War, young hooligans from the hills dressed as goat herders, and bourgeois intellectuals with PhDs in computer science and philosophy. It is the strangest and most hated Jewish tribe in the West, but without it, Israel would be nothing more than the ‘entity’ everyone talks about.

Labour politicians Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the great champions of peace and the first to build Jewish settlements, knew this – from the ‘capital’ Ofra outside Ramallah (the town hall features a photo of Peres planting trees in the settlement) to the settlements in Gaza (‘your security is like Tel Aviv’, Rabin told the settlers of Gush Katif). Haaretz, the Hebrew-language Palestinian newspaper, is well aware of this; a few days ago, it ran the headline: ‘The Israeli left must fight the settlements, not build them’.

No Israeli politician today is opposed to the settlements: not Naftali Bennett, who was their spokesperson; nor Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, who have promised not to dismantle them; nor Avigdor Lieberman or Yuli Edelstein, who live in a settlement; and certainly not the leading contender to succeed Netanyahu, former General Gadi Eisenkot, who frequently visits the settlements.

If an agreement setting out definitive borders were to be signed tomorrow, the vast majority of settlers would pack their bags. They did so in Gaza, where the most hardline settlers lived; they said that instead of peace, war and pogroms would follow, and they were right. Some might even choose to remain within a Palestinian state. Yet in the West, it is often deemed acceptable that there should be no Jews between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, even though twenty per cent of Israel’s population is Palestinian Arab (the so-called ‘apartheid’), there are five hundred mosques in Israel and numerous Arab parties (including those hostile to Israel) sit in the Knesset, whilst it is accepted that the Palestinian Authority is ‘jüdenrein’ (and anyone who sells land to them by law deserves the death penalty) and that the only functioning synagogues in the Palestinian territories are in the enclaves under Israeli control.

This is indicative of two opposing national projects: one, a democratic Jewish state which, for all its flaws, has integrated minorities and built pluralistic institutions; the other, an Islamist and tyrannical regime which, when it seizes control, carries out ethnic cleansing of Jews and continues to instil a culture of delegitimisation. It is only the Israeli settler who keeps the UN awake at night. Israel is referred to as an ‘occupying power’ 530 times in General Assembly resolutions. Not Indonesia in East Timor, not Turkey in Cyprus, not Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, not Morocco in the Sahara.

Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for three thousand years, except between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank was under Jordanian control; the Jews were driven out and no one thought to call for the creation of a ‘Palestinian state’, which only emerged with any real force after Israel conquered the land in a defensive war. Yet, instead of referring to them as ‘Israeli residents in the disputed or occupied territories’, the term ‘settler’ prevails – connoting an intruder or an alien, and often a white, English-speaking settler whom a renowned poet and visiting professor in the United States stated he wished to ‘wipe out’.

It should be noted that the land inhabited by the settlers was first part of the Ottoman Empire, then the British Mandate, then the Kingdom of Jordan, and has been under Israeli administration since 1967. Nor should we overlook the fact that, from 1967 to the present day, Israel has not driven the Palestinians from those lands. In places such as the Sahara and Northern Cyprus, settlers now form the majority and there has been large-scale expulsion of the pre-existing inhabitants. Just ask the Greeks in Cyprus. In 1967, the Israelis carried out a census of the West Bank and Gaza and recorded a Palestinian population of 586,000 (plus 69,000 in East Jerusalem), compared with three million today. The strange ‘genocide’.

The Oslo Accords divided that land into three zones – a jigsaw puzzle of security and sovereignty to be shared between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and to be defined in a final peace agreement far more complicated than the Belgian-Dutch town of Baarle-Hertog, split in half by cycle paths and traffic lights. First Ehud Barak and then Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians full sovereignty over the West Bank, including the settlements, but the sincere democrats Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen refused. And Ariel Sharon, who was the ‘hamelech’ – the king – of the settlers, withdrew them from Gaza and northern Samaria in exchange for peace. But for the Palestinians—whether Islamists or secular nepotists, it makes little difference—Israel is one big ‘colony’: not just the settlers living between Hebron and Nablus, but Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Nahariya and Sderot. Yes, the very same Sderot that was overrun by Hamas during the pogrom of 7 October. “They believed they would overthrow Israel and start dividing it into cantons as early as the day after the conquest.” So says a senior Hamas figure speaking to Haaretz, who had taken part in the conference convened by leader Yahya Sinwar, at which the plan for the “post-Israel” era was set out in black and white. “One day, a well-known Hamas figure rang me and told me they were drawing up a complete list of the heads of the committees for the cantons to be created in Palestine. He offered me the chairmanship of the Zarnuqa committee.” An Arab village on whose land the Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood of Rehovot stands. Another settlement. But even setting aside the Bible, history, rights, the San Remo resolutions and the wars won on the battlefield (and winning defensive wars is no small feat), the West Bank is not just any piece of land. It is the system of ridges that holds the Israeli coast – the demographic and economic heart of the state – in its grip. From its hills, one can see Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and the motorways linking the north to the south. Whoever controls the high ground controls a country that is, in many places, twenty kilometres wide. A territory which, if left unoccupied or under hostile control, would become a launching pad for anyone wishing to split Israel in two. Ronald Reagan understood this and said: “I have supported Israel’s heroic struggle for survival since its foundation: within the pre-1967 borders, Israel was ten miles wide. Most of the Israeli population lived within artillery range of the Arab armies. I will not ask Israel to live like that again.” Hence the Israeli dilemma: they will not give up those lands again because they have no suicidal tendencies, not after the Second Intifada and 7 October (over three thousand Israeli deaths), but nor do they want to govern another two million Palestinians. Area C, where the settlements are located, was placed under Israeli military administration at Oslo with a view to an agreement that Jerusalem has offered on several occasions (the Trump plan provides for the annexation of Area C). Colonel Danny Tirza, who built the anti-terrorism barrier, explains that, at the Vatican’s request, 19 of the 22 Christian sites in Jerusalem were included within Israel (such as the Sisters of the Rosary).

The West Bank is dominated by a chain of ridges: the Samarian Mountains to the north and the Judean Mountains to the south, ranging from 700 to 1,000 metres in height. The ridge runs alongside the Israeli coastal plain, where 70 per cent of the Jewish population and 80 per cent of the state’s industrial capacity are concentrated. In some places (the Netanya area), the distance between the sea and the 1967 Green Line narrows to fifteen kilometres. Between the Palestinian city of Tulkarem and the Israeli town of Kfar Saba: half a kilometre. Critical infrastructure (airport, motorway, power lines, water pipelines) is located just a few kilometres from the West Bank high ground. Control of the airspace above the ridge is crucial: it takes just three minutes to fly the entire width from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Without an army (and settlers) on those heights, Israel’s security would collapse. Peres said as much in an interview with David Frost: “We were up against forty million Arabs. We used all our settlements to defend ourselves.”

The Jordan Valley, sparsely populated and hostile, has always served as a barrier against the infiltration of weapons and conventional forces. Controlling it means shortening the line of defence compared to the old 1967 line. It is a geographical reality that cannot be negotiated, but must be occupied, managed, defended or lost, with all the injustices that this entails. The settlers fulfil a role that no army can replace. Their civilian presence establishes facts on the ground (and in the Middle East, facts count for more than fine words). Without them, there would be a corridor stretching from Tehran to Tel Aviv, passing through the networks of proxies and terrorism already operating in Gaza and Lebanon.

Just take a look at a map. To the west of Israel lies the sea. To the north, Lebanon and Syria. To the south, Gaza and Egypt. Who would guarantee the Jewish state’s existence from the east? Jordan, which is 70 per cent Palestinian and survives thanks to Israeli intelligence and American bases? Iraq, a third of which fell into the hands of ISIS in a matter of hours, whilst another third is an Iranian colony? Israel cannot afford to become a long, narrow country that can only be defended by ever-higher walls – walls which, on 7 October, proved as fragile as clay. Before the 2005 withdrawal, the settlements in Gaza served as an outpost that extended deep into the south-west, hindered rearmament via Egypt (the famous Philadelphia Corridor) and integrated the defence of the Negev into a system that was not limited to the barrier. After 2005, with the settlers gone, that strategic depth vanished: Hamas consolidated its control, tunnels proliferated and rocket attacks multiplied, demonstrating in hindsight just how much their presence had constrained the terrorists’ capabilities. The protection was neither absolute nor cost-free, but it was decisive. It was another Labour politician, Yigal Allon, who conceived the idea.

It is argued that the settlers are an obstacle to peace. Some settlements cause daily friction, and certain fringe groups fuel violent tensions. But the real obstacle to peace is not the presence of a few thousand Jewish families in Hebron and Ariel, which could be ceded to the Palestinians tomorrow in exchange for Israeli territory (land for land works better than land for peace). Rather, it is the systematic refusal, on the part of the Palestinian leadership, to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state within any borders. As long as even Jaffa and Haifa remain ‘settlements’ and Israel an ‘entity’, any Israeli withdrawal will not be a step towards coexistence, but a precedent for the next step; and the settlers will not be an obstacle to peace, but to war. The terrorists know this; that is why they attack them. In 2024, there were 6,300 Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews in the West Bank, resulting in the deaths of 27 Israelis and three hundred wounded. In 2025, there were 5,051 Palestinian attacks, with 24 Israelis killed and 400 wounded. And no, attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians are not equivalent. The Nobel Laureate for Literature, Günter Grass, said he had a solution: “Israel must leave not only the occupied territories; the occupation of Palestinian land is criminal.” Translated: all settlers.

Tel Aviv University stands on the site of what was once an Arab village, Sheikh Munis, before the Palestinians abandoned it whilst waiting for five Arab armies to wipe Israel off the map. This is, after all, what is still desired not only by all Islamic terrorists, the regimes that fund them and the UN scoundrels, but also by Western pacifists who have read the psychiatrist Fanon too much and too poorly – the man who wrote of the French settlers in Algeria: “To kill a European is to kill two birds with one stone: to eliminate both the oppressor and the oppressed. What remains is a dead man and a free man’. Let us remain human; let us kill imaginary Jewish settlers.