Israelis protecting Palestinians from colonists

Heavily abridged. URL in title.

The Israeli Activists Aiding Palestinian Victims of Settler Violence

Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are out of control—and these Israelis are doing something about it.

Gershom Gorenberg

The New Republic: July 2, 2026

The Palestinian farmers and their children came on foot up the terraced hillside near the town of Halhul in the high country of the West Bank, carrying shears to prune their grapevines. With them came Israeli activists from Bnei Avraham (The Children of Abraham), a religious peace group. From above came other Israelis, at least two men carrying assault rifles, along with teenage boys, from a settlement outpost on Halhul’s land, some of the boys with spray canisters in hand, and then the fierce stink of pepper spray was in the air and an old man and a girl lay on the ground, wounded by spray in their eyes, their pain caught in shaky video footage from an activist’s phone.

The settlers, as if they were the ones in danger, alerted an army unit, and soldiers arrived, bearing a military document that declared the area off-limits to civilians. They ordered the Palestinians and the activists to leave—but not the settlers. 

The story is a growing number of Israelis engaged in a form of activism known as “protective presence”: accompanying Palestinian farmers and shepherds, putting themselves at risk of arrest and injury, and in doing so bringing settler terror into the spotlight of Israeli media and political debate.

The violence reached a peak this spring when public attention in Israel was focused on the constant missile alerts of the war with Iran. During the six weeks of that conflict, the Yesh Din (There Is Law) human rights organization tallied 378 incidents of settler violence, with 200 Palestinians injured and eight shot dead.

Michaeli began accompanying herdsmen 10 years ago, after the first outpost appeared in the area. That was the start of the Jordan Valley Activists. Today the group has over 100 volunteers from around Israel, with as many as 20 in the field at any time. Since October 7, as attacks increased, more people have joined and have begun spending nights as well as days with the herding communities.

Yet protective presence is the bravest and probably the most effective Israeli resistance to settlement I’ve seen. I’ve covered settlement in the occupied territories for over 40 years, and I wrote the authoritative history of how the disastrous project began. Since the start, there have been Israelis who opposed settlement. Yet while they spoke, and wrote, and voted, and held protests, the supporters of settlement built roads and homes, and they moved in and stayed. The protective presence volunteers are in fact present, in the West Bank, connected to Palestinian communities, making them visible to other Israelis.

“It feels like a duty,” she says, “to stand and resist and say” to the settlers, “No, you don’t represent me, you aren’t connected to the religion that I believe in.”