Deep inside the occupied West Bank, the unauthorized Israeli settler outpost of Havat Gilad spreads across several hilltops, its sheds and simple block houses clearly visible from neighboring Palestinian villages. The area recently experienced a major wave of settler attacks on local Palestinian communities following a violent confrontation in the village of Tal, where an Israeli security guard from Havat Gilad was killed. The clash, the original cause of which remains disputed, also resulted in the deaths of four Palestinians and an Israeli soldier.
In a rare instance of an international media organization being permitted entry into the unauthorized outpost, Yehuda Shimon, a resident and lawyer representing Israelis arrested for violence against Palestinians, defended the retaliatory violence. He asserted that the attacks on neighboring Palestinian villages were entirely justified as revenge for the death of the outpost's security guard.
"I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata," Shimon said, explicitly naming the Palestinian villages located closest to the outpost. When challenged on whether he was equating a single Jewish life with hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives, Shimon responded, "No… millions. One Jewish life, it's 10 million [Palestinians]." Confronted on the racism of his statement, Shimon did not deny it, replying, "Yes, I know. But this is the truth, because God chose us [and] because of this you are jealous."
Such extreme views are central to understanding the escalating conflict across the West Bank, where settlements and outposts continue to expand alongside rising violence against Palestinian residents. Many settlers, particularly in unauthorized outposts like Havat Gilad that were constructed without Israeli planning permission or legal oversight, view the West Bank as land divinely promised to the Jewish people. Under international law, both official Israeli settlements and unauthorized outposts are considered illegal.
Havat Gilad was established more than two decades ago to commemorate an Israeli security officer who was killed by Palestinians. Today, it remains a loosely scattered collection of houses and a vineyard perched high on a hill. Near the entrance of the outpost, a row of newly burned buildings is visible. While Shimon claimed the destruction was the result of an arson attack by Palestinians, Israeli media reported that police were treating the fire as accidental, likely caused by cigarette butts discarded from a passing car window.
The Israeli government has previously expressed intentions to legalize Havat Gilad. However, the Israeli settlement-monitoring organization Peace Now stated that formal legalization has been blocked because much of the land on which the outpost sits is recognized by Israel as privately owned Palestinian property. Instead of legalizing the existing footprint, the government has designated a patch of land to the south of the outpost as state land to allow settlers to build there.
Shimon dismissed these legal complications, arguing that international law is irrelevant because the Bible grants Jewish people the right to West Bank land. He criticized the Israeli government and military for failing to back Jewish claims with sufficient force, despite the massive expansion of settlements and outposts under the current administration and the presence of far-right religious-nationalist ministers in the cabinet. He further criticized the Israeli military for not using lethal force more frequently against Palestinians during clashes with settlers.
"The Israeli government and the Israeli army, they like the United Nations – if Palestinians come and Jewish people come, [they] don't kill the Palestinians, [they] just separate the people," Shimon said. "Afterwards, because they don't kill Palestinians, the Palestinians kill us."
However, casualty statistics compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) contradict Shimon's claims. According to OCHA, 64 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank from the beginning of this year until July 20, with 18 of those deaths occurring during settler attacks. Of those 18, at least 12 were killed by settlers, three by Israeli forces, and in three cases the responsible party remains unclear. Only one Israeli was killed during the same period. OCHA also noted that injuries inflicted by settlers during these attacks have risen sharply, averaging more than three per day this year.
A former Israeli soldier who recently served in the West Bank observed that he only ever witnessed fear on the faces of Palestinians, and "never on the face of any Jew that lived there." When confronted with this statement, Shimon accused the global media of accepting the Palestinian narrative. He claimed, without presenting evidence, that every Palestinian in the area owns two guns and is preparing to repeat the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. "If we don't wake up and drop them all from this area, from all areas of Israel, even Gaza too, they will come back, and come back [again]," he said.
The ongoing conflict in the West Bank is defined by a deep systemic inequality. Since occupying the territory during the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has built hundreds of settlements and outposts that now house more than half a million Jewish residents. These settlers are protected by the Israeli military as well as local armed security units staffed by the settlers themselves. Furthermore, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law and enjoy broad freedom of movement. In contrast, Palestinian residents are subject to military occupation and military courts, their daily lives heavily restricted by checkpoints and road closures—a dual system that prominent human rights groups have described as "apartheid." Israel has rejected this characterization as "absurd and distorted."
When asked about the future of the Palestinian residents in the West Bank, Shimon presented three options: live quietly under Israeli rule and ownership of the land, voluntarily emigrate to other Arab or Muslim nations, or face death. "If you don't want to make peace with us, and you don't want to get out, I don't have a choice: I must kill you, and I kill you all," he said.
This perspective closely mirrors a blueprint published in 2017 by Bezalel Smotrich, who is now Israel's Finance Minister. In his plan, Smotrich proposed that Palestinians must abandon their national ambitions and live quietly under Israeli rule. Those who wished to maintain national aspirations should leave the territory, while those who stayed and engaged in armed struggle would be killed by the military. More recently, as a government minister, Smotrich has advocated for the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to make way for Israeli resettlement, and has publicly referred to Palestinian identity as "an invention."
For the Palestinians living near the outpost, the threat is constant. One resident whose home sits within sight of Havat Gilad explained that she watches the hills constantly from her window, looking for signs of an imminent settler attack. Many local Palestinians expressed a deep sense of abandonment, stating that the occupying military focuses solely on protecting the settlers, while their own security forces are entirely absent and the international community has turned its back on them. "It's a very bad situation," one resident said. "Europe is busy, America is occupied with Iran, China doesn't care, Russia is fighting Ukraine, the UN are finished and the Arabs have internal problems. We don't know what we can do."
