Settler paramilitaries evict Palestinians

[Opinion. Arming the occupiers to take over. Really?!?]

Israel Organizes and Arms Settler Militias to Terrorize West Bank Palestinians

What often appears as sporadic settler violence is in fact an organized system with an official structure fully operating as intended.

David Schutz

Credit: BBC, The Guardian, AFP, CNN: 25 Oct 2025

An Integrated Web of Civilians and Soldiers

Since 1967, Israel has ruled occupied Palestinian territories through dual structures—military occupation and civilian settlements—each reinforcing the other while mutually devolving responsibility.

At the heart of this arrangement lies a legal device: regional settlement councils, chartered under the 1964 Municipalities Ordinance as standard Israeli municipalities, yet which operate in occupied Palestinian territory.

Israeli jurisdiction rests on military orders and the West Bank Emergency Regulations, which extend most aspects of Israeli law in personam to settlers but not to the land itself. Territorial authority is supplied by the Israeli military, making the army the de facto sovereign.

Each settlement appoints a ravshatz, or a civilian

security coordinator, paid by the Defense Ministry and authorized by the military. Weapons are issued from the Defense Ministry’s Department for Settlement Security and National Security Ministry.

Parallel to the ravshatz are the Hagmar Territorial Defense brigades: a reserve network integrating each settlement into a military grid reporting to the IDF, volunteer militia that is armed and funded by the state. The volunteer militias, the reservist militias, and the military itself all work together to attack and terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The result is that we have settlers operating as the military without regulation,” Roni Peli, of Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, told Drop Site.

Forced Evictions

An armed man in a ragtag uniform claimed to be representing Hagmar Har Hevron, though no such Israeli military unit officially exists, and identified himself as a member of three bodies: Ma’on’s rapid-response squad, the area hagmar unit, and a so-called farm patrol. He refused to say which group had sent him.

The man told me that he would be collecting a full day’s pay for his work, and acknowledged that he could do so whenever he wanted. He claimed his rifle came “from the army,” adding that he had received it “from the base,” but when pressed, he clarified that the “base” was the settlement itself, where no army base exists.

When the Israeli Civil Administration and police finally arrived, accompanied by army soldiers, they declined to review documents proving Palestinian ownership and left the militia in control of the site.

The B’Tselem researcher, who is also a resident of Susya, said armed groups of organized settlers frequently also detain Palestinians. They “kidnap people often … anyone who tries to resist eviction.

In a recurring pattern, settlers raid in broad daylight and, hours later, the same men reappear in uniform to enforce closures and secure the ground they seized.

A Private Army

Before October 7, 2023, Israel maintained about 450 rapid response squads. A Knesset report found that the division of control between government bodies over these units rests on a 1974 government decision that was never published and is missing from the state archives. Military Order 432 of 1971, which regulates kitot konenut in the West Bank, and related directives on open fire and emergency mobilization also remain classified.

In the report, researchers described sweeping non-cooperation from the Israel police, Defense Ministry, and IDF—none of which provided data on the squads’ authority, arming, or oversight.

Following October 7, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced more than 700 new kitot konenut, expanding the police-run network, while the army’s share remained largely unchanged. The new units were incorporated under the border police. By late October 2025, 1,052 kitot konenut units were active.

In October 2023, Ben-Gvir’s ministry also began distributing around 10,000 newly purchased assault rifles to kitot konenut and loosened gun-ownership eligibility, while the Defense Ministry supplied training, ammunition, and armory infrastructure. By November 2025, Ben-Gvir’s office said roughly 230,000 gun licenses had been issued over the past two years.

Meanwhile, the National Missions Ministry funded vehicles, drones, and surveillance systems; regional councils added weapons and vehicles through private and foreign donors, including U.S.-Jewish federations that gifted sniper rifles to kitot konenut under campaigns like “Friends of Samaria.”

The KRIC noted that much of this equipment was distributed through ravshatz-operated armories, bypassing Israeli military depots. Earlier in 2023, the government created the Mishmar Leumi (National Guard), a Border Police reserve under Ben-Gvir, meant to absorb local militias and volunteer frameworks.

Activated after October 7, it became a vehicle for mobilizing and reinforcing kitot konenut, with recruitment tracks allowing civilians to join armed policing roles outside the traditional Magav or IDF pathways.

Formally under the police commissioner, its control can shift to the minister of national security in emergencies.Leading critics call it Ben-Gvir’s “private army.”

Simultaneously, the army expanded hagmar battalions, adding about 5,500 reservists for a total of roughly 8,000, divided between regional companies and settlement-level auxiliaries known as bnei hayishuv (“sons of the town”). New siyur havot (“farm patrols”) emerged to police land outside settlement boundaries, funded from the same Defense Ministry budgets as the kitot konenut.

By May 2024, when the army began reducing hagmar deployments, a parallel militia network aligned to Ben-Gvir’s National Guard and Smotrich’s policy priorities was already firmly entrenched. The military is now considering further troop reductions in the West Bank, transferring security responsibilities to “local elements,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

“They don’t distinguish even between the hagmar and the rapid-response squads, everyone’s in uniform now,” a resident from the South Hebron Hills told Drop Site on condition of anonymity. “I know many of them by name. Some even have criminal records. Now they’ve been given uniforms.”

This article is published in collaboration with Drop Site and Egab.