Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Josquius]

Depressing how little attention this usually gets even from sources that don't shy away from showing flashier Israeli misdeeds.

Extremist settlers rapidly seizing West Bank land

Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.

She told the BBC the armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.

The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year - more than in any previous year.

The outposts - which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans - often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.

But the BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.

The BBC has also analysed open source intelligence to examine their proliferation, and has investigated the settler who Ayesha Shtayyeh says threatened her.

Experts say outposts are able to seize large swathes of land more rapidly than settlements, and are increasingly linked to violence and harassment towards Palestinian communities.

Official figures for the number of outposts do not exist. But BBC Eye reviewed lists of them and their locations gathered by Israeli anti-settlement watchdogs Peace Now and Kerem Navot - as well as the Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the occupied West Bank.

We analysed hundreds of satellite images to verify that outposts had been constructed at these locations and to confirm the year they were set up. The BBC also checked social media posts, Israeli government publications and news sources to corroborate this and to show that outposts were still in use.

Our analysis suggests almost half (89) of the 196 outposts we verified have been built since 2019.

Some of these are linked to growing violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Earlier this year, the British government sanctioned eight extremist settlers for inciting or perpetrating violence against Palestinians. At least six had established, or are living on, illegal outposts.

A former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, Avi Mizrahi, says most settlers are law-abiding Israeli citizens, but he does admit the existence of outposts makes violence more likely.

"Whenever you put outposts illegally in the area, it brings tensions with the Palestinians... living in the same area," he says.

One of the extremist settlers sanctioned by the UK was Moshe Sharvit - the man Ayesha says threatened her at gunpoint. Both he and the outpost he set up less than 800m (0.5miles) from Ayesha's home, were also sanctioned by the US government in March. His outpost was described as a "base from which he perpetrates violence against Palestinians".

"He's made our life hell," Ayesha says, who must now live with her son in a town close to Nablus.



Outposts lack any official Israeli planning approval - unlike settlements, which are larger, typically urban, Jewish enclaves built throughout the West Bank, legal under Israeli law.

Both are considered illegal under international law, which forbids moving a civilian population into an occupied territory. But many settlers living in the West Bank claim that, as Jews, they have a religious and historical connection to the land.

In July, the UN's top court, in a landmark opinion, said Israel should stop all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel rejected the opinion as "fundamentally wrong" and one-sided.

Despite outposts having no legal status, there is little evidence that the Israeli government has been trying to prevent their rapid growth in numbers.

The BBC has seen new evidence showing how two organisations with close ties to the Israeli state have provided money and land used to set up new outposts in the West Bank.
One is the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an international body founded more than a century ago and instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel. It has a Settlement Division - responsible for managing large areas of the land occupied by Israel since 1967. The division is funded entirely by Israeli public funds and describes itself as an "arm of the Israeli state".

Contracts obtained by Peace Now, and analysed by the BBC, show the Settlement Division has repeatedly allocated land on which outposts have been built. In the contracts, the WZO forbids the building of any structures and says the land should only be used for grazing or farming - but satellite imagery reveals that, in at least four cases, illegal outposts were built on it.

One of these contracts was signed by Zvi Bar Yosef in 2018. He - like Moshe Sharvit - was sanctioned by the UK and US earlier this year for violence and intimidation against Palestinians.

We contacted the WZO to ask if it was aware that multiple tracts of land it had allocated for grazing and farming were being used for the construction of illegal outposts. It did not respond. We also put questions to Zvi Bar Yosef, but received no reply.

The BBC has also uncovered two documents revealing that another key settler organisation - Amana - loaned hundreds of thousands of shekels to help establish outposts.

In one case, the organisation loaned NIS 1,000,000 ($270,000/£205,000) to a settler to build greenhouses on an outpost considered illegal under Israeli law.

Amana was founded in 1978 and has worked closely with the Israeli government to build settlements throughout the West Bank ever since.

But in recent years, there has been growing evidence that Amana also supports outposts.

In a recording from a meeting of executives in 2021, leaked by an activist, Amana's CEO Ze'ev Hever can be heard stating that: "In the last three years... one operation we have expanded is the herding farm [outposts]."

"Today, the area [they control] is almost twice the size of built settlements."

This year, the Canadian government included Amana in a round of sanctions against individuals and organisations responsible for "violent and destabilising actions against Palestinian civilians and their property in the West Bank". The sanctions did not mention outposts.

There is also a trend of the Israeli government retroactively legalising outposts - effectively transforming them into settlements. Last year, for example, the government began the process of legalising at least 10 outposts, and granted at least six others full legal status.


In February, Moshe Sharvit - the settler Ayesha Shtayyeh says evicted her from her home - hosted an open day at his outpost, filmed by a local camera crew. Speaking candidly, he laid out just how effective outposts can be for capturing land.

"The biggest regret when we [settlers] built settlements was that we got stuck within the fences and couldn't expand," he told the crowd. "The farm is very important, but the most important thing for us is the surrounding area."

He claimed he now controls about 7,000 dunams (7 sq km) of land - an area greater than many large, urban settlements in the West Bank with populations in the thousands.

Gaining control over large areas, often at the expense of Palestinian communities, is a key goal for some settlers who set up and live on outposts, says Hagit Ofran of Peace Now.

"Settlers who live on the hilltop [outposts] see themselves as 'protecting lands' and their daily job is to kick out Palestinians from the area," she says.

Ayesha says that Moshe Sharvit began a campaign of harassment and intimidation almost as soon as he set up his outpost in late 2021.

When her husband, Nabil, grazed his goats in pastures he had used for decades, Sharvit would quickly arrive in an all-terrain vehicle and he and young settlers would chase the animals away, he says.

"I responded that we'd leave if the government, or police, or judge tells us to," Nabil says.

"He told me: 'I'm the government, and I'm the judge, and I'm the police.'"

[viper37]

There is no colonisation in Israel.  Israel does not occupy or annex any land. 
You are clearly mistaken.
Whoosh.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Start wars, lose land. Simple formula. Worked well to set the Nazis straight.

[grumbler]

Start wars, lose land. Simple formula. Worked well to set the Nazis straight.

Except that the Palestinians did not war on Israel and so didn't lose to them, and if Israel is now regarding the lands they occupy as Israel, they must grant (under international law) citizenship to the territories' occupants.

The example of the Nazis doesn't seem to faze those Israelis seeking their own lebensraum.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hamas is Palestine's military.

[Valmy]

Hamas is Palestine's military.

I get that point with Gaza, but the West Bank?

That seems obtuse.

[grumbler]

Hamas is Palestine's military.

Hamas is Israel's military.





See, I can play the "say obviously stupid things to troll others" game as well.

[Razgovory]

Start wars, lose land. Simple formula. Worked well to set the Nazis straight.

Except that the Palestinians did not war on Israel and so didn't lose to them, and if Israel is now regarding the lands they occupy as Israel, they must grant (under international law) citizenship to the territories' occupants.

The example of the Nazis doesn't seem to faze those Israelis seeking their own lebensraum.

I'd consider the second intifada a war waged by the Palestinians against Israel.  They had a chance for peace, they chose war.  The blood and soil romantic nationalism espoused by the Palestinians and their supporters doesn't seem to faze anyone either.  Or the support they have among actual Nazis, both past and present.

[Valmy]

Start wars, lose land. Simple formula. Worked well to set the Nazis straight.

Except that the Palestinians did not war on Israel and so didn't lose to them, and if Israel is now regarding the lands they occupy as Israel, they must grant (under international law) citizenship to the territories' occupants.

The example of the Nazis doesn't seem to faze those Israelis seeking their own lebensraum.

I'd consider the second intifada a war waged by the Palestinians against Israel.  They had a chance for peace, they chose war.  The blood and soil romantic nationalism espoused by the Palestinians and their supporters doesn't seem to faze anyone either.  Or the support they have among actual Nazis, both past and present.

I didn't like German civilians dying in mass numbers either. Well I don't like it in retrospect.

I also am not a huge fan of the huge amount of ethnic cleansing they were subjected to after the war.

But the Germans also committed mass genocide and huge wars of conquest. The Palestinians are no angels but I feel like they at least deserve as much sympathy as the literal Nazis. I don't think anybody who loses a war deserves to be ethnically cleansed from their homes.

[Razgovory]

I give them as much sympathy as the literal Nazis including the Nazis who fought for Palestine.  While both failed in their ambitions, the Palestinians failed much worse.  Like if Germany got beaten back in 1939 and ended up losing Prussia to Poland.  Face it, the 1940's were a rough time for antisemities.  If the war had gone the other way, and Jewish population was "reduced" by another million, would it be a better one?  Probably not.

[Josquius]

I mean, that's just not true.
The Israelis did withdraw from Gaza.

Amazing how even in this case of an innocent Palestinian and an Israel who is blatantly shitting on Israeli law it's still a case of "yeah, but, the Muslims are bad"

[Valmy]

I give them as much sympathy as the literal Nazis including the Nazis who fought for Palestine.  While both failed in their ambitions, the Palestinians failed much worse.  Like if Germany got beaten back in 1939 and ended up losing Prussia to Poland.  Face it, the 1940's were a rough time for antisemities.  If the war had gone the other way, and Jewish population was "reduced" by another million, would it be a better one?  Probably not.

Ok so are you in favor of civilians being ethnically cleansed and/or killed or not? I just think there are reasons to be unhappy Israel is doing those things besides being a Nazi.

I disagree that the Palestinians did things worse than Nazi Germany by the way. Palestine isn't covered in tons of rubble and millions didn't die. But even if they did killing civilians and ethnic cleansing are unsavory.

[Razgovory]

I didn't say I agree with it, but civilians do die in war, and people do lose territory.  When I say that Palestinians did worse than Germans I mean they weren't as good at annihilating Jews as the Germans.  The rest of the Arabs kinda made up for it.

We had similar situations when India decolonized, and everyone is cool with that.

[The Minsky Moment]

We had similar situations when India decolonized, and everyone is cool with that.

Other than the wars, terrorist attacks, and nuclear brinksmanship.

[Razgovory]

We had similar situations when India decolonized, and everyone is cool with that.

Other than the wars, terrorist attacks, and nuclear brinksmanship.

?