"Badge Of Honor"
By Simon Speakman Cordall
Published On 6 Jun 20266 Jun 2026
When the European Union issued its latest tranche of sanctions against Israeli settler groups and their leaders, Regavim, founded in part by the country’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, these groups welcomed the measures as a “badge of honour.”
Another sanctioned figure, Daniella Weiss, whose movement, Nachala, has held conferences on the Gaza border to discuss plans for settlement expansion into the occupied Palestinian territory, likewise dismissed the European penalties as “ridiculous” and “banal”.
Overall, the nonchalant response from the targeted figures and entities suggests that none of the EU measures will do anything to stop settlement expansion or make individuals accountable for the growing wave of violence against Palestinians.
Ironically, the largely toothless measures might instead become a source of domestic prestige for their leaders, analysts say, as few would expect these hardline settler figures to spend their summers in Paris or London and thus be affected by the sanctions. Instead, a wave of terror in the occupied West Bank will likely continue, with the tacit support of the government.
In the eyes of many activists and observers who spoke to Al Jazeera, the EU’s focus on group and individual “violations” falls far short of articulating the scale of the highly coordinated settler attacks or the extent to which the state and society support them.
“It’s gotten much worse since October 2023. They now have the courage to attack into the heart of densely populated Palestinian villages. I see them, they came into the heart of my village outside Ramallah, they feel safe to do so,” Tahseen Alayan, deputy director of Al-Haq, told Al Jazeera.
“If you buy a sheep, they will steal it. If you build a house, they will destroy it. If you buy a car, they will burn it.”
Examples of Israeli government complicity in these settler raids are not hard to find, and the statistics indicate collective efforts to entrench Israeli control over the West Bank, which has been occupied since 1967.
Israeli forces and settlers are accused of killing an estimated 1,168 people in the occupied West Bank since October 2023 and injuring a further 12,666 Palestinians. Another 33,000 people have been displaced, while Israel has also detained nearly 23,000 Palestinians in the West Bank during this period, many without charge.
“The violence does not happen in a vacuum,” Alayan continued. “This is an extension of the Israeli government; settlement is at the core of their identity. They are protected by the government and by the occupying services, and they freely admit it.”
A tragic incident that comes to mind is settler Yinon Levi, who allegedly shot dead Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in Masafer Yatta last year. Despite the murder being captured on video, Levi nevertheless remains at large.
“Even if they are ever prosecuted, the sentences rarely reflect the severity of the crime,” Alayan said. “These people return to their homes and are seen as heroes.”
‘Entitlement and Superiority’
This sense of impunity that settlers appear to be imbued with cannot be detached from the appointment to ministerial positions of leading figures or sympathisers of the settler movement – notably Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the latter born in an illegal settlement in the occupied Golan Heights.
In a sign of state-settler cooperation to achieve direct control of the West Bank, in contravention of the Oslo Accords, Israel last year announced plans for the establishment of the E1 settlement that would link occupied East Jerusalem with its growing Maale Adumim bloc.
According to plans outlined by Smotrich, when established, this settlement would kill any hopes of the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and fulfil a biblical prophecy that many in the movement have been working towards.
Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor of social-political psychology from the Department of Education at Tel Aviv University, interpreted the thinking behind the settlers leading this violence across the West Bank.
“It is divine order to settle West Bank. With divine order you do not argue but achieve it in the way Yehoshua carried it 3,000 years ago when he entered the promised land,” he explained. “He achieved it with sword, so we need to do the same.”
Shai Parnes of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem told Al Jazeera that the absence of international pressure has bolstered the alliance between the state and settler movement.
“The Israeli regime is an apartheid regime based on Jewish supremacy and institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians,” Parnes told Al Jazeera.
“Any Israeli, civilian or soldier, who harms a Palestinian receives full immunity and support from the Israeli systems, and Israel itself receives this from the international community. These facts explain the Israelis’ sense of entitlement and superiority.”
Source: Al Jazeera