Over the last nine months, the West Bank has been the site of intensified ethnic cleansing by Israel against the Palestinian people. This has taken a leap this week—with the army and government giving armed reactionary civilians official state backing to carry out this ethnic cleansing to an even greater degree.

The West Bank¹ is not part of the state of Israel. It is a part of historic Palestine that was illegally seized in 1967 (along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem) and has been illegally occupied by Israel ever since. It is home to more than 3 million Palestinian people. The main force occupying this whole area are the more than 500,000 armed settlers. Most of these are reactionary fascists who outright steal and demolish the homes of Palestinians, and terrorize them—preventing them from farming, grazing their sheep and more.

On June 20, the Guardian newspaper reported that “The Israeli military has quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich.” A few days later, Smotrich told members of his political party that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] an integral part of the state of Israel.”

Smotrich is a fascist Jewish supremacist who openly declares that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people” and is now taking major steps to eliminate these “non-people” from the West Bank. 

Smotrich is considered “far-right” in the already fascist government of Prime Minister Netan-nazi (aka Benjamin Netanyahu). But his racist lunacy fits right in with the needs of the Zionist (Jewish supremacist) state of Israel right now.

As we’ve written at revcom.us, “What is happening with the Israeli attack on Palestinians is Netan-nazi et al seizing on the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel to attempt a ‘final solution’ to the ‘Palestinian problem.’ Israel aims, at a minimum, to reduce the Palestinians to such a state that they will no longer pose any problem for Israel, if not literally killing off all the Palestinians.”

What does this mean on the ground? 

It means there have been Israeli raids on Palestinian villages all throughout the West Bank, the destruction of homes, and mass arrests resulting in the capture of almost 10,000 Palestinian people. This includes young teenagers. The violence against and even torture of Palestinian detainees, including children, is well documented.

This means violent rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages. Mainstream New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof described his visit with a long-time Palestinian contact in the West Bank, 70-year-old farmer Abdel-Majeed Hassan, in the “smoldering” village of Qusra. “Clouds of black smoke swirled from a field where rampaging Israeli settlers had lit it on fire, while also setting fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles.” Hassan shows Kristof “the blackened ground” where his car had been set afire by the settlers. There have been many such attacks; six villagers have been killed. Hassan says “at any moment we expect settlers to attack.” He has told his grandchildren not to visit him. His wife says the family should abandon the land before they are all killed.

This kind of terrorism is routine now. 536 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli “settlers,” military or police since October 7—130 of them children.

This terror is effective in carrying out ethnic cleansing. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has documented 18 different communities where villagers were forced to flee their land.²

One example: on November 9, 2023, 15 carloads of settlers backed by Israeli soldiers and a bulldozer showed up after midnight to Khirbet Tana in the Nablus district. “The settlers attacked the residents, tied their hands, beat and humiliated them, injured one in the head and cracked another one’s ribs. They told the residents they had to leave the site and detained them for about an hour and a half before letting them go.” Most of the residents fled with their flocks of sheep.

The settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has been taking place, and growing, for decades. This has been passively ignored, or even actively supported, by the Israeli police and military. But because of international law and pressure, and some divisions within the Israeli rulers, these security forces have at times acted as a limited constraint or check on the settlers. 

The move last week by Smotrich and the Israeli government largely rips away these constraints. Putting more power directly into the hands of the settlers is like if the cops in the U.S. made the KKK an official part of the state apparatus. Their open violence and terror is being given more open state backing. And Israel is sending a message to Palestinians: “Get out now, while you still can.”

This is a crime on top of a crime on top of a crime. The mass resistance against this needs to grow, with the demand: STOP the U.S./Israeli Genocide of the Palestinian People Now!