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Amid rising tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and new moves by the Israeli government to expand its hold on the territory, an Israeli general on Monday issued a harsh rebuke of the government\u2019s policies there and condemned rising \u201cnationalist crime\u201d by Jewish settlers.<\/p>\n
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuks, the outgoing chief of Israel\u2019s Central Command, which is responsible for the country\u2019s military forces in the West Bank, said at a departure ceremony that a \u201cstrong and functioning\u201d Palestinian Authority was in Israel\u2019s security interest.<\/p>\n
The general\u2019s statement appeared to be a swipe at Israel\u2019s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is himself a settler and who has been crippling the authority by withholding tax funds that Israel collects on its behalf in the roughly 40 percent of the West Bank that the authority administers.<\/p>\n
General Fuks also expressed dismay over an increase in settler violence in the West Bank, which is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and a Jewish settler population that has grown to well over 500,000. An extremist minority of violent settlers, he said, had been undermining Israel\u2019s reputation internationally and sowing fear among Palestinians. \u201cThat, to me, is not Judaism,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least not what I was raised on in my father\u2019s and mother\u2019s home. That is not the way of the Torah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel seized control of the West Bank from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israeli civilians have since settled there with both the tacit and explicit approval of the government, living under Israeli civil law while their Palestinian neighbors are subject to Israeli military law.<\/p>\n
The international community largely views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many of them are illegal under Israeli law but are tolerated by the government. Many outposts that began as illegal under Israeli law have subsequently been legitimized by the government, and Palestinians have long argued that they are a creeping annexation that turns land needed for any independent Palestinian state into an unmanageable patchwork.<\/p>\n
Last year, the United Nations reported<\/a> that attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank had surged in the weeks following the Oct. 7 attacks that set off the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, with at least 115 killed, more than 2,000 injured and nearly 1,000 others forcibly displaced from their homes, citing violence and intimidation by Israeli forces and settlers.<\/p>\n General Fuks argued that terrifying the Palestinians living alongside Jews was \u201ca dangerous mistake\u201d and that the actions of violent Jewish settlers threatened Israel\u2019s security.<\/p>\n But Mr. Smotrich has been vocal about wanting Israel to claim all of the West Bank. Last month, he struck a deal with ministers to release some money<\/a> withheld from the Palestinian Authority in exchange for the legalization of five more Jewish outposts, and last week, the finance ministry released about $136 million.<\/p>\n Mr. Smotrich said in a post on social media that day that he was working with planning authorities on approving more than 5,000 additional housing units<\/a> in the West Bank. \u201cWe\u2019re building the good country and thwarting the creation of a Palestinian state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Last month an Israeli ministry approved the largest seizure of West Bank land since the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, claiming about five square miles in the Jordan Valley, according to Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settler activity. Israel has seized roughly nine square miles of the territory this year<\/a>, making 2024 by far the peak year for appropriations, Peace Now said.<\/p>\n While settlers and ministers are defiant, their activities are a source of tension for Israel with other nations, including its ally the United States, at a time when it is increasingly isolated in the world over its conduct of the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cSettlements continue to be counterproductive to a two-state solution,\u201d John Kirby, the national security spokesman for the White House, said in a briefing with reporters on Monday. \u201cWe don\u2019t support that.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n