Incidents of Israeli settler violence across the West Bank are not rare. In fact they happen almost every day and have steadily increased over the past few years. But this week’s scenes were an unprecedented escalation. Hundreds of Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage, setting alight dozens of cars and homes after two brothers were killed by a Palestinian gunman.
The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Bethan McKernan has been in the West Bank this week and tells Michael Safi that many of the 700,000 or so Israelis living in the territory and East Jerusalem are motivated by what they see as a religious mission to restore the historical land of Israel to the Jewish people. Settlement communities are viewed as illegal under international law, and one of the biggest obstacles to peace.
The surge in violence in the West Bank coincides with what some are calling an “Israeli spring”. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have joined anti-government protests against proposed curbs to the power of the supreme court that many fear will send Israel down an authoritarian path similar to that of Turkey and Hungary. The common thread that links the two growing crises are a government made up of influential figures from the settler movement and the far right.
Photograph: Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
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