The Long Brief: Judea's Settlers

Judea, Samaria, and the settlers who hold the ridge while the world smears them.

We’ve been talking in the Daily Brief this week about Iran shoving more money, weapons, and “advisers” into Judea and Samaria — the same way it fed Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Islamic Republic isn’t confused about what this territory is for: a future launchpad into Israel’s heartland. The only people pretending it’s about “human rights” are the ones enjoying the grants.

So let’s pull the camera back.

This Long Brief maps the ground that almost nobody in the international system is honest about: Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank.” The ridge that decides whether rockets can sit over Ben Gurion. The Jewish communities the world calls “settlements” and “settler violence” as if a besieged farming family outside Hebron is the problem, not the men being paid a salary to stab them.

If you want to understand what Iran is investing in, what the PA is gaming for, and what the settlers are actually doing on that ridge, you need more than headlines. You need the architecture:

Judea, Samaria, and the Settlers on the Ridge

The territory in question has two competing names (with deep implications). There is the historical term, Judea and Samaria. And a newcomer, The West Bank—which entered into common usage after 1948, when Jordan occupied and annexed this region on the West Bank of the Jordan river. In 1950, Jordan officially renamed Judea and Samaria as the West Bank during its time of occupation (an act only recognized by a few countries). This new term was a sterile geographic label that was intended to sever any Jewish historical reference. Over time, it became the dominant term internationally—by governments, diplomats, and media. Even after 1967 when the territory came back into the Israeli orbit, this remained the name in common international usage.

In contrast, Judea and Samaria are the age-old Hebrew/Biblical names for the hill country, evoking the heart of ancient Jewish homeland. These terms were common in usage up until 1948. For example, British Mandate-era documents and even early UN discussions referred to Samaria and Judea in describing the region. Israel’s government officially revived the usage of Judea and Samaria after 1967, embedding the historical claim that this land is the ancestral patrimony of the Jewish people.

Pro-Israel commentators argue that the prevalence of West Bank erases Jewish history and sovereignty claims. They note that the term West Bank was invented by an occupying power (Jordan) explicitly to dissociate the land from its Jewish roots. By using this term, the world, perhaps (in some cases) unwittingly, reinforces the notion that the area is distinctly Arab or “Palestinian,” with no inherent Jewish connection. As one Israeli observer put it, “When Israeli journalists use ‘West Bank,’ they’re adopting the terminology of those who deny Jewish history… telling the world this land is separate from the Jewish homeland.” In this view, language is a weapon. Whoever defines the name of the territory influences perceptions of legitimacy and ownership. Thus, referring to Judea and Samaria simply as the West Bank is seen as a form of narrative warfare—one that obscures millennia of Jewish history (the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Jewish holy sites, continuous presence, etc.) and undermines Israel’s claim of sovereign rights.

It is worth noting that even within Israel, usage of the terms varies. Officially, Israel’s administrative label is the “Judea and Samaria Area,” and many (most?) Israelis prefer those historic names. Yet in practice, even Israeli officials (including Prime Minister Netanyahu) sometimes say “West Bank” when speaking to international audiences. This dual usage reflects the ongoing tug-of-war between historical narrative and political reality. In recent years, there have been U.S. political moves to encourage adopting “Judea and Samaria” in official language (e.g. proposals by lawmakers to replace “West Bank” in U.S. documents), highlighting how charged the terminology has become. Ultimately, the dominance of “West Bank” in global discourse signals the prevailing view of the area as occupied foreign territory, whereas “Judea and Samaria” asserts a Jewish indigeneity and claim—a claim that the term West Bank pointedly ignores.

International Framing on the Global Stage

On the international stage, the prevailing framing of Judea and Samaria is as occupied Palestinian land, with virtually no acknowledgment of Jewish historical claims. The United Nations and most countries consistently refer to the area as “the occupied Palestinian territory” (oPt) or “Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” For example, UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) reaffirmed that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” In UN fora, phrases like “the Palestinian people’s right to their territory occupied in 1967” are routine, and the entire region (plus Gaza) is treated as the corpus of a future Palestinian state. U.N. agencies pointedly label Israel as the “occupying Power” and describe Israeli presence beyond the 1949 Green Line as an unlawful occupation that must end. The terminology “Judea and Samaria” is virtually absent in UN resolutions and reports — it is a nomenclature non grata, associated only with Israeli usage. Instead, even biblical Jewish heritage sites in the area are often referred to by Muslim/Arab names in UN texts, reflecting a policy of de-emphasizing Jewish linkage.

A note: it is important to remember that the United Nations is not a forum for justice—or even for human rights. It is simply a forum for countries to get together and discuss matters important to them. Just because the name of it sounds nice, doesn’t mean we are all united by the same values. Each country gets one vote, regardless of size, and the Arab-world has a bloc that is particularly opposed to the existence of the Jewish state. The biases are baked in as a feature, not a bug, of the system.

The European Union takes a similar stance. Official EU statements speak of “the occupied West Bank” and frequently condemn “illegal Israeli settlements” on what they explicitly call Palestinian land. A recent EU declaration “deplores Israel’s approval of plans to expand illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank” and urges reversal of such decisions. The EU uniformly refers to Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria as “settlements” deemed illegal, and frames them as a primary threat to the two-state solution. European officials, leveraging flawed interpretations of international law, consider Israel an occupying power with no sovereignty in the area; hence they employ terms like “occupied Palestinian territory” and insist on distinguishing Israel proper from the West Bank in all dealings. Notably, the EU and member states often preface mentions of Jerusalem with “occupied” as well, underscoring non-recognition of Israel’s unification of Jerusalem.

The United States’ official language has varied with different administrations, but traditionally U.S. diplomacy also uses “West Bank” and avoids “Judea and Samaria” in formal statements (aside from those made by a few pro-Israel members of Congress or the occasional mention by an Ambassador). U.S. government maps and documents do not treat the West Bank as sovereign Israel. For instance, the State Department’s standard human rights reports speak of “Israel, West Bank, and Gaza” as separate units. U.S. officials regularly affirm that the territory’s status is disputed to be resolved via negotiation — implicitly rejecting Israel’s claims for now. As an illustration, a recent internal U.S. memo noted that “the international community, including the U.S. government, refers to the territory Israel occupied in 1967 as the West Bank and doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty there.”

Even under more sympathetic administrations, the term “occupied” has been sometimes omitted but sovereignty was not recognized; under others (e.g. Biden’s), the phrase “occupied West Bank” returned. When U.S. Ambassador David Friedman (during the first Trump administration) mused about using “Judea and Samaria,” it was seen as a sharp departure from U.S. policy, and indeed the traditional usage prevailed in official channels. In short, the U.S. aligns with the general international lexicon in calling it West Bank and regarding it as territory awaiting a peace agreement, not as Israeli land. (Notably, a 2025 initiative by some U.S. lawmakers to mandate using “Judea and Samaria” in federal documents is a minority position aimed at countering what they see as a diplomatic bias.)

International NGOs and human rights organizations likewise adhere to terminology that reinforces the Palestinian narrative of indigeneity and Israeli occupation. Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch invariably speak of “the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, explicitly including the West Bank (often adding “including East Jerusalem”). In their reports, Jewish settlements are portrayed as illegal and as part of a system of oppression (some have gone so far as to label Israel’s rule an “apartheid” over Palestinians). The common framing by NGOs is that Israel’s presence is a belligerent military occupation and Palestinians are an occupied people lacking sovereignty and rights. Terms like “annexation,” “colonization,” and “settler colonialism” feature in their lexicon to describe Israeli policies.

For example, an Amnesty report in 2022 describes how “since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians have been continuously targeted by discriminatory laws to dispossess them for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.” This language not only underscores the lack of legitimate Israeli claims in their view but also casts Israel as the active oppressor and Palestinians as passive victims of a foreign power. NGOs often also use legal designations like Fourth Geneva Convention violations, UN resolutions, etc., reinforcing that the world sees Judea/Samaria as Palestinian land under temporary Israeli control.

In international fora such as the UN Human Rights Council, one hears statements about “700,000 Israeli settlers in Occupied Palestinian Territory” and accusations that Israel has failed to rein in settler attacks, all couched in terms where the Palestinians are the rightful proprietors. By contrast, any Israeli assertions of historic or legal rights (e.g. referencing the San Remo Resolution or the Mandate era) find no traction in these arenas. The net effect of international framing is a near-consensus vocabulary: “occupied West Bank,” “settlements,” “settlers,” “Palestinian territory,” and resolution calls for Israel’s withdrawal.

This uniform language across the UN, EU, and NGOs has powerful political implications — it delegitimizes Israeli sovereignty claims and sets the baseline that Israel’s presence is transient and subject to reversal. Israeli officials often lament that even the name “Judea,” from which the word Jew itself is derived, is erased from diplomatic discourse, reflecting a broader erasure of Jewish history in the land.

The Legal Architecture of Judea and Samaria

To grasp the legal status of Judea and Samaria, one must go back a century. After World War I, the 1920 San Remo Conference and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine established the framework for a Jewish national home in the territory, explicitly recognizing Jewish historical ties. The Mandate, adopted in 1922, guaranteed Jewish rights of settlement throughout the land west of the Jordan River. This was effectively the modern land title deed for the Jewish people in their homeland. Crucially, these Mandate provisions were later preserved by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, often called the “Jewish People’s clause.” Article 80 ensured that nothing in the UN Charter would alter the rights granted to any people under existing international instruments. In other words, the UN’s founding document carried forward the League of Nations’ recognition of Jewish legal rights in Palestine. This is why the Jewish claim to live in Judea and Samaria is not a mere religious aspiration but a matter of international law and history.

Another key element is understanding what sovereign power, if any, Judea and Samaria legitimately belonged to after the British Mandate ended. In 1947 the UN proposed partitioning the land into Jewish and Arab states, but the Arab side rejected it, and war ensued. When the armistice lines were drawn in 1949, the area that Jordan came to call the “West Bank” was left in an ambiguous state. The envisioned Arab state never materialized. Jordan proceeded to annex Judea and Samaria in 1950, but this annexation was illegal and recognized by only two countries (Britain and Pakistan). No other nation (not even the Arab states) acknowledged Jordan’s sovereignty there. Thus from a legal standpoint, when Israel later took control of the territory in 1967 (after Jordan joined the war against Israel), it did not capture the land from a recognized legitimate sovereign. This creates a sui generis (unique) situation under international law.

In classical terms, “occupation” refers to holding the territory of a sovereign state temporarily under the laws of war. But Judea and Samaria in 1967 were not the recognized territory of any state, which is why even legal experts describe Israel’s role as unique—no prior sovereign was supplanted. Israel argued that while it would meet the humanitarian provisions of occupation law, the application of the term “occupied” in the legal sense was incorrect given the territory’s status. Notably, UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967 did not demand Israel return to the indefensible pre-war borders; it intentionally called for withdrawal “from territories” (not “all territories”), coupling that with a requirement for new “secure and recognized boundaries.”

A frequent charge is that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from forcibly transferring its own population into occupied territory. However, Israel’s legal stance has been that Geneva Article 49(6) was intended to prevent the kind of atrocities perpetrated during World War II: the forcible deportation or transfer of populations to colonize or change a territory’s demographics. The Red Cross’s (hardly a friend to Jews or Israel) authoritative commentary on Article 49 confirms it was designed to prohibit practices like those of the Nazis, who moved their civilians into occupied lands for political and racial reasons, displacing indigenous peoples. Israel asserts that this is fundamentally different from individual Jewish civilians voluntarily moving into communities in Judea and Samaria without any coercion. Indeed, Israel does not “transfer” its population. The government does not round up people and relocate them. If they did, the hew and cry would raze the mountains. Citizens move by choice, often motivated by historical connection or quality of life. Furthermore, because the territory’s status is unique, Israel did not accept that the Geneva Convention formally applies; still, it pledged to abide by its humanitarian provisions while correctly asserting that Jews living in the land of their ancestors is not a war crime.

These communities are an exercise of rights first granted under the Mandate and never lawfully superseded. The very terminology is debated: Israeli discourse often avoids the word “settlements” due to its pejorative connotations abroad. They note that the League of Nations Mandate explicitly encouraged close Jewish settlement on the land, and nowhere did it forbid Jews from living in Judea, Samaria, or Jerusalem.

Thus, Israelis who reside in these areas view themselves as living in their historical homeland. Even an official commission in 2012 (the Levy Commission) concluded that the conventional laws of occupation do not apply here and that the Israeli presence is legally sui generis. All of this is to say that the blanket label of “illegal occupation” is rejected by Israel and most people with a functioning frontal lobe.

Additionally, as one former Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser put it, international law does not recognize a category of “illegal occupation” — occupation is a situation to be resolved, not a crime in itself. The final status of the territory, Israel maintains, can only be determined by a peace agreement, not by U.N. resolutions or academic debates.

Perhaps the most misunderstood legal-political structure is the division of Judea and Samaria into Areas A, B, and C under the Oslo Accords. Many people vaguely know Oslo (1993–1995) created a Palestinian Authority, but few grasp the on-the-ground map that resulted.

Under the 1995 Interim Agreement (Oslo II), Israel and the PLO agreed to a territorial partition of responsibilities.

About 40% of Judea and Samaria (encompassing over 95% of the Palestinian Arab population) was split into enclaves labeled Area A and Area B, forming a kind of archipelago of autonomous zones.

Area A (today roughly 18% of Judea and Samaria) was designated for full Palestinian Authority control. The PA would handle both civil affairs and internal security there. Area A includes all the major Palestinian cities (like Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, etc.).

Area B (about 22% of Judea and Samaria) was a hybrid: the PA administers civil matters (schools, healthcare, economy) for the towns and villages in Area B, but Israel retains overriding security authority and control of the territory’s perimeter. In practice, this means Israeli forces can enter Area B for security operations, but day-to-day governance is by the PA.

The remainder, Area C, constitutes roughly 60% of Judea and Samaria. This territory was left under full Israeli control (both civil and security) pending final status negotiations. Area C includes all Israeli settlements, strategic high ground, the Jordan Valley, and other open rural lands where relatively few Palestinians live (under 5% of the Palestinian population). Crucially, the Oslo agreement explicitly recognized Israel’s jurisdiction in Area C, including matters of land use, planning, and security, until a permanent peace deal is reached.

In other words, the Palestinian leadership agreed in a signed accord that Israel would govern Area C for an interim period, and only through direct negotiations would the final border be drawn. This interim period, originally supposed to last five years, has stretched to almost 30 years. Yet the Oslo II map remains the operative reality on the ground: a patchwork of Palestinian self-rule islands amid a sea of Israeli-controlled territory (see figure below). Israelis are barred from entering Area A (it is even posted at checkpoints that entry is dangerous and forbidden by Israeli law), whereas Palestinians can travel to Areas B and C.

Area C is the territory that contains all Israeli settlements and military installations, the vital Jordan Valley along the border with Jordan, and the open spaces that separate Palestinian towns. For Israel, control of Area C means control of security. The IDF can operate freely there and prevent the flow of heavy weapons, and it provides strategic depth (more on that in the next section).

The PA and sympathetic actors have sought alternative ways to gain footholds in Area C outside of negotiations. One method has been a campaign of EU-funded construction. The European Union, in open defiance of Oslo’s terms, has bankrolled and helped orchestrate the building of dozens of unauthorized Palestinian outposts, roads, and infrastructure across Area C — effectively an attempt to create “facts on the ground” that preempt any negotiations.

Former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad explicitly launched this strategy in 2009, announcing a plan to unilaterally “establish a state” by building in Area C without Israeli permission. The EU eagerly joined in. Entire clusters of houses and even schools have been built with EU flags emblazoned on them, in areas that by agreement are under Israeli jurisdiction.

For example, as of 2020, close to 70,000 illegal Arab structures had been thrown up in Area C — and many aren’t even real houses. They’re ghost houses: shells with no windows, no doors, no plumbing, sometimes no roof. I’ve seen them myself. They’re not built to be lived in. They’re built to be photographed from afar. The goal isn’t community; it’s cartography.

Put a concrete box on a hill, claim it as a “village,” demand services, and then use the existence of that empty box as evidence of a “Palestinian presence” creeping closer and closer to Israeli farms and communities.

European aid pays for the concrete, the blueprints, the legal teams, and the propaganda — the entire assembly line. From the PA’s perspective, it’s brilliant: manufacture a population on paper, fabricate “facts on the ground,” and then present the world with a fake state-in-waiting that Israel must surrender land to accommodate. They don’t want a state. They want a lever to pry Jews off the ridge. It’s optics as strategy — and it’s diabolical.

This is a flagrant violation of Oslo. A bypass of the agreed process that forbids unilateral changes. Israeli officials have decried this as a “European illegal land grab,” arguing the EU is willfully eroding the agreements it itself witnessed in the 1990s. A leaked EU internal document in 2022 openly spoke of “preserving Area C as part of a future Palestinian State” while paradoxically claiming to act “in line with the Oslo Accords.” By funding unpermitted Palestinian expansion in Area C, the EU has shed any pretense of neutrality. The EU is breaching the Oslo framework and creating conflict instead of peace by effectively trying to award the Palestinians the fruits of negotiation without them having to negotiate.

While Areas A and B are on paper under Palestinian administration, a stark reality has emerged: the Palestinian Authority’s grip on security in these areas has weakened dramatically, especially in recent years. The PA was supposed to prevent terrorism and maintain order in the cities it controls. Instead, several Palestinian cities (particularly in northern Judea and Samaria (Jenin and Nablus)) have become lawless enclaves where militant groups freely proliferate.

Israeli security officials acknowledge that the PA has “lost control” of northern Judea and Samaria, as its security forces are often unwilling or unable to confront terror groups entrenched in those areas. Areas became virtual no-go zones for PA police, effectively ruled by local gangs and Islamist militias—considering the PA is a jihadist organization, the fact that even more extremist actors have done this should give you pause.

This decay in governance reached a point where Israel had to launch large-scale raids to dismantle terror infrastructure that the PA would not touch. The PA’s security forces, hamstrung by corruption and lack of public legitimacy, often choose not to clash with fellow Palestinians from groups like Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad—especially when those groups enjoy broad popular support for attacking Israelis.

The result is a paradox: the PA rules in name, but does not truly govern. For instance, in Jenin in 2023–24, armed youth militias tied to Hamas and PIJ established such influence that Mahmoud Abbas’s administration undertook an unprecedented security operation to reassert control, essentially leading to firefights between PA forces and other Palestinians. Observers described it as verging on a “Palestinian civil war” in the streets of Jenin. Even so, many Palestinians viewed the PA’s moves as serving Israel’s interests, deepening their resentment of the PA.

What this means for the legal/political picture is profound. Calling Judea and Samaria “occupied by Israel” is a misnomer in parts of Area A where even the IDF cannot enter without a battalion-strength force and intense combat. In cities like Nablus or Jenin, Israeli incursions (when absolutely necessary to stop imminent attacks) involve armored vehicles and sometimes air support, because these locales are essentially semi-autonomous enclaves of militancy. The PA’s effective collapse in these areas underscores that Israel is not in full control of Judea and Samaria. It controls Area C and conducts operations elsewhere when needed, but it does not micromanage daily life in Nablus or Jenin.

On the flip side, the PA’s weakness also highlights why Israel is extremely wary of any further territorial withdrawals: if the PA can’t secure a single city without Israeli backup, how could it secure an entire independent state? The experiment of Oslo, giving Palestinians self-rule in Areas A and B, has resulted in a patchwork of mini-states, mostly harboring terror. The IDF remains the ultimate security net; when the PA fails to act, Israeli forces conduct raids to arrest terror suspects in Area A cities. This awkward reality is far from the “statehood” Palestinians claim to desire (when offered dozens of times they continue to reject it), but it has been the status quo for years. Additionally, it fails the legal requirements for statehood. Internationally, few grasp this on-the-ground complexity. Diplomats still speak of “the Palestinian Authority” as if it governs a coherent polity, when in fact it has almost no authority.

Strategic Importance of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria

Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria is not only an ideological matter but also a strategic security issue. Geographically, this region constitutes the highlands overlooking Israel’s densely populated coastal plain. The terrain of the West Bank is a north-south mountain ridge that in places rises to 3,000 feet — high ground that dominates vital Israeli infrastructure along the coast, including Israel’s international airport, major highways, and 70-80% of its population and industry. In military terms, if a hostile force were ever to occupy these hills, Israel’s heartland (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya, etc.) would lie exposed to direct fire and observation. As one strategic analysis noted, a hostile army on these highlands could “cripple or even bring to a standstill” Israel’s economy and threaten “Israel’s very existence.” No other territory lost or gained in 1967 had such existential leverage: losing the Jordan Valley or the Golan would be dangerous but survivable, whereas losing the central highlands would be fatal for the state.

Because of this, the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are critical to maintaining geographic and strategic depth. They are not merely civilian villages; in strategic thinking they anchor key terrain. Many settlements sit on hilltops or along critical ridges that serve as eyes and ears over the terrain or as buffer zones. For example, the Jordan Valley settlements create a line of Israeli presence along the eastern frontier, which Israel views as a buffer against invasion or infiltration from the east. The Jordan Valley forms a natural barrier (drop of 4,000+ feet from the hills down to the Rift Valley) that any attacking ground force would struggle to cross quickly. By holding that line, Israel can forward-deploy defenses. Indeed, Israeli military doctrine has long insisted on retaining the Jordan Valley as Israel’s security border, precisely to prevent a surprise armored thrust from the direction of Jordan/Iraq. Jewish communities there (though sparsely populated) ensure Israel’s continuous control of the valley floor and the escarpment, making any future army assault far more difficult and buying time for mobilization.

Across the ridges of Samaria and Judea, Israel has also emplaced early-warning stations and anti-aircraft systems, often adjacent to or within settlements. Because radar and line-of-sight from Israel’s low coastal plain is blocked by the mountains, Israel deploys air defense and early-warning facilities on hilltops to spot threats coming from the east. If those heights were ceded to a hostile entity, Israeli aircraft would have mere moments of warning time (as little as 3 minutes from Jordan to the sea) in the event of enemy fighters or missiles. Thus, control of the high ground is not only about ground forces but also about airspace security and reaction time. The presence of Israeli communities solidifies that control; they often coincide with the locations of key IDF bases or strategic infrastructure.

Another facet is counterterrorism and internal security. After Israel’s 2002 offensive (Operation Defensive Shield) suppressed the Second Intifada, the IDF noted that a permanent intelligence and operational foothold in Judea and Samaria was vital to prevent terrorist resurgence. Here, settlements play a role as well. A former Israeli general pointed out that Israeli communities in the Nablus (Shechem) area “served as protected exit points for periodic operations inside Nablus” during the counter-terror efforts.

In other words, settlements function as forward bases or logistics nodes for the IDF, enabling quick deployment into Palestinian cities to arrest terror suspects. The general argued that without the expansive Jewish settlements in place, the IDF would be “hard-pressed to stay in the area and effectively carry out its military role.” Large settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim also anchor strategic road junctions and high ground that facilitate the IDF’s freedom of movement throughout the territory. They effectively segment Judea and Samaria in ways that make it harder for hostile groups to maneuver freely.

From Israel’s perspective, these civilian communities ensure that the IDF is not viewed as an alien occupier among a uniformly hostile populace, but rather as protecting Israeli civilians who “live next door” in the territory. As Moshe Dayan once observed, “For Israel’s security, there should be Jewish civilian settlement in these areas. If our military is stationed among a purely Arab population, we will be considered foreign occupiers and eventually forced out. But if there are Israeli civilians in the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion, the Samaria hills, then the IDF is there not as an occupier but to ensure peace for Israel’s people on the coast.” This encapsulates a strategic rationale: settlements normalize an Israeli presence, making withdrawal less likely and providing a human shield of legitimacy for military deployment.

Deterrence is another strategic concept linked to the settlements. The dispersal of Jewish communities creates a “line in the sand” indicating Israel’s intent to hold the land. Some Israeli strategists argue that the permanence of settlements sends a message to potential aggressors that Israel is there to stay, thus deterring aggression or terrorist campaigns aimed at forcing Israel out. Conversely, if Israel treated its presence as temporary (as during the Oslo era), militants might feel encouraged that violence could drive Israelis away.

The settlers themselves often act as a tripwire: any attack on these civilians will provoke an immediate and strong military response, which in theory deters would-be attackers. Moreover, Israeli control over Area C (about 60% of the West Bank where all settlements are located) gives the IDF control of the open terrain and international border regions, pushing Palestinian armed threats into the urban areas. This provides Israel strategic “depth” — a buffer so that any conflict with jihadi militants or even an eastern front invasion would be fought away from Israel’s main cities.

Violence in Judea and Samaria

The conflict over Judea and Samaria is violent. But it is not symmetrical. One side is running a sustained terror campaign; the other has a microscopic fringe of offenders in a population of over half a million. If you care about reality instead of slogans, you have to say that plainly.

Palestinian attacks on Jews in and around Judea and Samaria are seemingly the pulse of the conflict—a near constant rhythm. Stones and Molotov cocktails are not teenage mischief. At highway speed even a fist-sized rock through a windshield is a murder weapon. Modi and I have a friend who has been stoned while driving there twice now — and not the kind of stoned Californians joke about. She’s had to drive home without the protection of windshield or windows on four flat tires, after being ambushed by Palestinians as she turned a corner on her way home. Another friend was the victim of a terror attack: stabbed multiple times with a machete while her friend was murdered beside her. The man who did that was eventually released in a political deal for the hostages snatched on October 7th and is now a millionaire off Palestinian Authority stipends and honors. That is how the other side prices Jewish blood.

Zoom out from the individual scars and look at the numbers. According to Shin Bet data, there were 6,828 Palestinian terror attacks in 2024 alone — including stone-throwing, firebombs, shootings, stabbings, car-rammings, and IEDs — double the previous year’s tally of 3,436. In the same year, Shin Bet and the IDF foiled around 1,040 major attacks in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem: planned shootings, bombings, rammings, even suicide attacks. That is what “daily life” looks like for Jewish commuters, farmers, and soldiers on those roads: thousands of attempts a year to kill or maim them, plus at least another thousand or more that never made it to the news because someone in intelligence caught the network in time.

This is not a one-off spike. It’s a long pattern. The Second Intifada covered the headlines with suicide bombers and mass-casualty shootings from 2000–2005. The “knife intifada” in 2015–2016 shifted the tactic but not the intent. This is what overprivileged idiots on campuses are calling to globalize!

The locations repeat like a grim liturgy: Hebron, Nablus/Shechem, the Binyamin region, junctions outside Ofra, Itamar, Ariel, Kedumim. Every few weeks: another drive-by shooting, another family ambushed on Route 60, another soldier gunned down at a bus stop, another Jew pulled from his car and beaten. The number of Israelis killed rises and falls year by year, but the daily attempt to murder Jews as a political and religious act never stops.

Earlier this week we told you about an attack where two terrorists rammed a car into a bus stop crowd and stabbed several. Though they were killed by security services, one Israeli died at their hands and several others were injured. Sadly, it’s not isolated. It’s paid for and encouraged by the PA, Iran, and others.

Now set that against what the world calls “settler violence.” If you listen to the UN, the legacy media, and certain NGOs, you’d think Judea and Samaria are crawling with roving Jewish gangs hunting Palestinians for sport. When you look at serious analyses instead of U.N. spreadsheets, the picture changes fast. Regavim, which dug through years of incident data, found that out of some 8,300 events the UN tagged as “settler violence,” only a small fraction were actually cases of Jews initiating violence. Traffic accidents, mutual brawls, incidents where Jews were the victims, even a dog bite got thrown into the same bucket. Their audit concluded that roughly 90% of those listings were misclassified. When you strip out the padding, you are left with about 833 genuine cases over seven years — roughly 110 incidents a year, fewer than ten a month. In that same 12-month window of 2024, as noted above, there were 6,828 Palestinian attacks recorded by Shin Bet. If you lived under that constant threat, you might be able to understand one of your neighbors acting out against it. You condemn their actions, but you can understand how they got to the point they might snap. Even a conservative think tank in Australia, cross-checking Shin Bet figures, estimated that Palestinians are responsible for around thirty times more violence in Judea and Samaria than Israelis. That is the order of magnitude we are dealing with.

So yes, there are Jewish criminals in Judea and Samaria. Some vandalize property. Some throw stones. A tiny, ugly fringe has carried out arsons and even murders. They are not “resistance fighters,” they are thugs. They should be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed. Full stop. But that does not magically turn “settler violence” into the dominant security story in this region. It doesn’t even put it in the same weight class. We are talking about a handful of offenders in a population of over half a million Jews living over the Green Line. Compare that to the depth of Palestinian militancy, where whole factions organize, arm, glorify and fund attacks, and where a man who butchers a Jewish woman with a machete can go home, be celebrated as a hero, and draw a salary for life.

One side initiates these acts out of genocidal intent. The other? Provoked into it. The reality of who is on either side of that doesn’t match the UN narrative.

The phrase “settler violence” survives not because it describes a reality, but because it serves a strategic narrative. It lets diplomats, NGOs, and lazy editors flip the script: instead of a Jewish minority under constant attack, you get a Jewish bully terrorizing helpless villagers. Instead of acknowledging that most of the bloodshed comes from one direction, you flatten everything into “clashes” and then highlight the rare Jewish offense as proof of a larger Jewish sin. That framing is dishonest. It inflates the actions of a tiny fringe of Jewish criminals into a civilizational indictment, while shrinking tens of thousands of Palestinian attacks into background static.

So let’s be clear. There is Palestinian terror in Judea and Samaria: organized, incentivized, glorified. There is also Jewish criminality: marginal, reactive, and absolutely prosecutable. The majority of people doing violence in Judea and Samaria are not Jewish “settlers” at all. They are Arabs whose families moved in from Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world to fight the very idea of a Jewish state on what they consider Islamic land.

The first is a war on Jewish existence in the land. The second is a law-enforcement problem inside a besieged community.

Calling both by the same name — or pretending they sit on the same moral scale — is just propaganda.

Let’s dig into that a bit more.

This asymmetry is readily apparent in the coverage. The media has turned “settler violence” into a franchise — a ready-made villain, always on call, always guilty, always representative. A scuffle in which a Palestinian gets bruised is packaged as proof that the hills are swarming with Jewish militias. A lone arsonist becomes the face of an entire population. A tree cut down by a disgruntled neighbor is reported with breathless urgency, as if the Sinai were on fire again.

Meanwhile, Palestinian terror is handled like weather. A “militant attack.” A “shooting incident.” A “clash.” No category, no pattern, no storyline. No one is asked to wonder why Israelis keep dying. No one is reminded that these attacks are purposeful — not spontaneous, not desperate, but curated and financed by a political machine that rewards the perpetrator before the blood on the ground has even cooled.

Time Magazine ran with “Israeli settler violence escalates…” because a Palestinian-American died in an altercation. The context — whether he initiated the violence, whether the settlers were responding to an ambush — barely made it into the copy. Contrast that with the murder of a Jewish family on a bypass road: it gets two paragraphs, a passive headline, and the insinuation that “tensions” were involved, as though gravity pushed the trigger. That is how the narrative economy works. Jewish defensive force is escalation; Palestinian offensive force is atmosphere.

Let’s look at what happens after the sirens stop.

When a Palestinian stabs, shoots, rams, or firebombs a Jew, the Palestinian Authority rewards them (if they’re arrested) or their families (if they die during the attack) They hand out salaries. They hold parades. They put the attacker’s face on a poster. They turn the killer into a model citizen and his family into a pension recipient. “Pay for Slay” isn’t a mere slogan. It means you can butcher a Jew, serve your time, get traded in a prisoner deal, and walk back into Ramallah as a millionaire. We literally know people who have lived through this cycle — and watched their attacker get upgraded to VIP status. The terror is systemic. Institutional. Financially subsidized. Ideologically celebrated. Multi-generational. When a Palestinian kills a Jew, the community responds with posters, candy, and stipends.

Now look at the other side.

Israel isn’t running a campaign of Jewish terror against Palestinians. It’s not trying to ethnically cleanse villages. These crimes are committed by a microscopic, self-selecting fringe. A tiny petri dish of idiots. Police hesitancy, military jurisdiction headaches, political reluctance — all of that makes enforcement messy, though not impossible. The legal apparatus functions, even if the media doesn’t like to admit it (and thereby torpedo their own narrative). When a Jew kills a Palestinian, the Israeli prime minister, president, IDF chief, and every normal human being in this country condemns it instantly. These acts horrify Israelis. These acts are not celebrated.

Walk the streets of any Palestinian city after a terror attack. Look at the posters and banners. The martyr billboards. The PA ministry that processes the stipends. The crowds cheering outside the attacker’s house before the Israeli bulldozer arrives. Violence is woven into the honor culture and reinforced by the governing authority.

Now look at Israeli society. When Jewish extremists commit a murder they are not canonized. They are not given medals. They are not adopted as role models for youth groups. They are condemned by rabbis, ostracized by the public, prosecuted by the state, and regarded as national shame. Presidents show up at the funerals of Arab victims. Israeli newspapers call the attackers what they are: terrorists. Not “activists.” Not “martyrs.” Terrorists.

Yet the story the world prefers is the opposite. “Settler violence” is the phrase that lets the UN, European diplomats, and American editorial boards pretend the problem is the Jews on the ridge rather than the terrorists in the valley. It’s the phrase that shifts attention from the 6,828 Palestinian terror attacks in a year. It’s the phrase that turns Palestinian aggression into “resistance,” and Jewish self-defense into “extremism.”

It works because it’s simple. It works because it flatters Western moral laziness. And it works because it’s tied to the larger goal: if you can criminalize Jewish presence, you can criminalize Jewish defense. If you can criminalize Jewish defense, you can delegitimize Jewish sovereignty. And if you can delegitimize sovereignty, the rest of the anti-Israel project writes itself.

Strategic Endgame: Who Wants What and Why

Every conflict eventually comes down to intent. Armies move for reasons. Governments stall for reasons. Militias rise for reasons. And Judea and Samaria — this narrow spine of hills, this contested inheritance of three thousand years — is a battlefield of intent long before it’s a battlefield of force.

Ignore the slogans for a moment. Forget the diplomats who speak in riddles because they’re afraid of offending someone at a cocktail reception in Brussels. Here is the bottom line: