Netanyahu vows crackdown amid deadly clashes in Israeli occupied West Bank

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday his government would establish new settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and legalize more existing ones, after a deadly clash left two Israelis and four Palestinians dead.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced “a series of steps” including “powerful action” and raids in Palestinian villages suspected of hosting militants and “accelerating the legalization of farm outposts and establishment of new ones.”

All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are regarded as illegal under international law, but they’ve been encouraged by Israel’s current government, which swung sharply to the right when Netanyahu formed his governing coalition with parties that had long existed on the right-wing fringes of Israeli politics. 

Israel disputes the international position that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal, arguing that most are legal under its own laws. For its part, the Israeli government has accused the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of “prejudicial conduct,” including downplaying “the level of violence against Israeli civilians” in the West Bank. 

Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians has increased since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas led attack sparked the war in Gaza. Critics say Netanyahu’s government, which includes ultranationalist, pro-settler ministers, has helped embolden the attacks.

Netanyahu vowed a forceful response Friday after the clash near the settlement of Havat Gilad and the neighboring Palestinian village of Tell, deep inside the West Bank.

Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements across the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, alongside around three million Palestinians. Israel says the area is disputed territory.

Netanyahu said his government would “act with full force against the terrorists and those who orchestrate and sponsor them.”

He made the declaration as his office confirmed that he would meet next week, at the invitation of President Trump, with the U.S. president in Washington. Netanyahu will also attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham.

According to Walid Zidan, head of the Tell village council, Friday’s clashes began when a group of about 20 settlers entered the village.

“Villagers came out to defend their homes and property. Clashes and physical altercations broke out between the residents and the settlers,” Zidan told AFP. “Israeli soldiers were present and together with the settlers began opening fire … it was the settlers who stormed the village, with the intention of killing, vandalizing and setting property on fire.”

The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry reported four Palestinians killed and four others wounded in the incident. Grieving Palestinian relatives gathered at two hospitals in the nearby city of Nablus, where the victims’ bodies were taken, an AFP journalist reported.

The Israeli military described it as a violent confrontation between dozens of Palestinians and Israeli civilians.

An emergency response security team from Havat Gilad was called to the scene along with soldiers, a military official said.

“During the confrontation, shots were fired on both sides and a weapon belonging to a member of the emergency response security team was stolen by a Palestinian terrorist,” the official said.

CBS News documented first-hand accounts of rising settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023 — a trend that activists and the United Nations say has only increased.

In June, OCHA said the “pace of settler attacks causing casualties or property damage” in the West Bank, at “an average of six incidents per day, is higher than in any year on record.”

OCHA said there had been over 1,000 settler attacks that caused casualties or property damage as of June 11, affecting more than 230 communities across the territory and displacing more than 2,200 Palestinians, “alongside hundreds more who have been displaced due to home demolitions by Israeli authorities.”

Arab states condemned Israel’s government earlier this year after it approved a process to register land in the West Bank as “state property,” a move critics said would accelerate Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s foreign ministry said the measure, approved late Sunday, would enable “transparent and thorough clarification of rights to resolve legal disputes” and was needed after unlawful land registration in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. But Egypt, Qatar and Jordan criticized the move as illegal.

Previously, Israel’s security cabinet approved a series of measures backed by far-right ministers to tighten control over parts of the West Bank currently administered by the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords, which have been in place since the 1990s.

Those measures, which also sparked international backlash, included allowing Jewish Israelis to buy West Bank land directly, and allowing Israeli authorities to administer certain religious sites in areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control.

The moves drew a joint statement from eight Muslim-majority nations, including close U.S. allies, condemning “in the strongest terms the illegal Israeli decisions and measures aimed at imposing unlawful Israeli sovereignty, entrenching settlement activity, and enforcing a new legal and administrative reality in the occupied West Bank, thereby accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people.”