Cultural Resistance and Cooperation: The Paradox of the Jewish Settler Movement in the West Bank

Imagine a social group actively resisting its own government's policies while at the same time serving as an unofficial arm of that same government. This paradox is exactly what we see in the Jewish settler movement in the West Bank. My aim is to highlight this duality of resistance and cooperation and its policy implications.

To understand the historical process, here is a brief overview of the approach taken by Religious Zionism, to which the ideological stream of the settlers belongs. Religious Zionism played an important role in the establishment of the Israeli state. However, it developed a deep sense of marginalization, especially in relation to the secular Labor movement, which dominated Israeli politics until the 1970s. Religious Zionism accepted this dominance and focused on securing religious arrangements in the public sphere, rather than challenging the fundamental values of society.

The Six-Day War of 1967, during which Israel took control of historically and religiously significant sites in the West Bank, began to elevate Religious Zionism from its marginal status. The occupation of these territories was interpreted as a messianic realization of a divine miracle, advancing the redemption of the Israeli Jewish nation. In response, Religious Zionist groups demanded that the state base its political and security decisions on religious values and considerations. This perspective led to the issuance of prohibitions against compromising religious assets in peace negotiations, along with efforts to settle in the West Bank to establish facts on the ground that would ensure its eventual annexation to Israel.

This theological interpretation sparked a rebellion among the younger generation of Religious Zionism, directed both against the secular camp and their parents' generation. Some of these young individuals founded the Gush Emunim movement (Bloc of the Faithful) shortly after the 1973 war. Gush Emunim initiated the establishment of settlements in the West Bank, focusing on areas where the government had previously avoided settling due to their proximity to Palestinian communities.

The settlements established by Gush Emunim were not initially approved by the government, but the Gush activists did not hesitate to clash with the army. Their counter-culture asserted that if the state did not act to realize the goal of settling the land, it lost its legitimacy, and thus it was permissible to resist its institutions, including the army.

After the right-wing Likud Party came to power in 1977, the government began actively encouraging the settlement enterprise, which today includes around half a million settlers in 150 settlements and towns across the West Bank. However, only about 35 percent of these settlers are ideologically motivated.

Gradually, Gush Emunim gave rise to the National Ultra-Orthodox sector (Hardal), which differs from the broader national religious community. This sector emphasizes religious stringency and, most notably, an uncompromising messianic belief in Jewish ownership of the entire Land of Israel. While highly concentrated in the West Bank and Jerusalem, this stream also has a presence in other communities across Israel.

Since the 1980s, this stream has pursued a strategy of increasing its presence in the army. While religious individuals (excluding the ultra-Orthodox) have traditionally joined the military, many were reluctant to enlist in combat units due to concerns about the secular culture within the army. To address this, and driven by manpower shortages, the military encouraged the establishment of pre-military academies designed to prepare religious youth for service. As these and other pre-military frameworks expanded, this sector leveraged its organizational capacity to negotiate arrangements with the army that facilitated cultural changes within the military.

Following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which included the evacuation of Jewish settlements there and three in the West Bank, the national ultra-Orthodox stream devised a new strategy. It outlined an agenda to reshape the military's identity. According to this vision, the military should prioritize victory as its supreme value, free from ethical dilemmas, with reduced commitments to international law. Above all, the agenda seeks to prevent the military from being deployed again to evacuate settlements in the West Bank. Notably, this sector stands as the only one in Israel with a clear agenda aimed at reshaping the military's identity. Judging by the outcomes observed during the Gaza war, this strategy has proven to be effective.

Regarding the settlements, this sector developed an agenda aimed at obstructing any effort to establish an effective Palestinian state. This agenda aligned closely with the government's stance. Since the formation of Benjamin Netanyahu's administrations in 2009, the government has floated the idea of a two-state solution while taking actions that undermine its feasibility. Achieving this integrated agenda has necessitated close cooperation between the army and the settlers.

Against this backdrop, the policing force operating in the West Bank has grown increasingly autonomous, thereby undermining its practical subordination to the military's supreme command. This shift is partly attributed to the rising presence of religious soldiers and officers within its ranks. The policing force is informally controlled by a network of unofficial entities, most notably the settler communities and their politically powerful leadership.

This process has been instrumental in enabling the policing force’s unofficial role. While the official mandate of this policing force includes protecting both Palestinian and Jewish communities, its unofficial role is to covertly facilitate the annexation of parts of the West Bank and obstruct the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian Authority. To achieve this, the policing force relies on settler violence to carry out actions that the formal Israeli state cannot openly pursue.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem identified an integrated process for taking over Palestinian land, consisting of the state’s official acts combined with settler violence. “Settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation,” the report said. This explains why such violence is systematically tolerated. To seize land, settlers deter Palestinians from entering certain areas and even expel entire communities through violence, often with the passive support of the army. This constitutes a functional form of violence. For example, since the beginning of the Gaza war, 20 isolated Palestinian communities and single-farm families, totaling about 1,200 residents, have been forcibly displaced. In all cases, the families left following acts of violence or threats of violence by settlers.

This is how the duality of resistance functions. Settlers challenge the government through violent actions, often revealing the tension between theological principles, central to the settlement project, and formal law. In turn, the government uses this resistance to employ settlers for 'gray' missions that formal Israel cannot openly carry out.

What often appears as the army’s failure to address settler violence should instead be understood as part of the logic of the policing army, which operates within a complex duality of official law versus informal rules, declarative orders versus actions on the ground. Settler violence is not a breakdown of law and order but an integral part of a state apparatus that cannot function within the formal legal framework.

The legitimacy of the policing army's unofficial annexation efforts rests on the claim that actions on the ground are driven by settler militias, which are said to have undermined the authority of the official Israeli state. As the state remains officially committed to international law, it is only partly accountable for these actions.

The army contributes to this dynamic, among other ways, by publicly condemning settler violence. For instance, in July 2024, Major-General Yehuda Fuchs, the outgoing head of the military’s Central Command overseeing the West Bank, stated that "nationalist crime has reared its head under the cover of war and has led to revenge and sowed calamity and fear in Palestinian residents who do not pose any threat." However, the violence condemned by the commanders is what they effectively perceive as dysfunctional violence—excessively aggressive actions that escalate to the collapse of the security order in the West Bank and severely harm Israel’s international legitimacy, both of which are undesirable outcomes from the military's perspective.

This dysfunctional violence includes organized and deadly attacks by settlers on Palestinian communities. For example, in August 2014, settlers attacked the town of Jit. Dozens of settlers, some masked, set fire to buildings and cars, and threw rocks and petrol bombs. Through such condemnations, the military distinguishes dysfunctional violence from functional violence, which is more restrained and relies on small groups of settlers. By doing so, the military diverts public attention away from the functional violence, which serves as an instrumental tool for the unofficial task of annexation.

To sum up. the case of the Jewish settler movement in the West Bank illustrates the complex and paradoxical nature of cultural resistance, which is crucial to the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Yagil Levy is a professor of political sociology and public policy and the head of the Open University Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations.

[1] This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the Bruno Kreisky Forum workshop, Talking Ideology: Resistance and Contestation in the Middle East, on November 16, 2024.