(Photo credit: Itai Ron / Middle East Images / AFP)The Cradle
AUG 12, 2026
Troops are deployed between settlers and Palestinians during escalating occupier aggression, preventing Palestinians from defending themselves
Over 300 Israeli reserve soldiers have signed a petition to army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir demanding a crackdown on “Jewish terrorism” by settlers in the occupied West Bank, arguing that unchecked settler violence is endangering Israeli troops deployed to contain it, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on 12 August.
Signatories of the petition say commanders have sent them into the field to stand between Israelis and Palestinians during what the military calls “friction incidents” while withholding both the powers and the means to stop an attack before it happens.
“We are reserve soldiers who have served hundreds of days since 7 October, 2023, including in the West Bank, where we risked our lives for Israel’s security, but we feel that the army leadership is abandoning us in the field and does not support us,” the petition stated.
“We are repeatedly asked to put out the fires, but no one ensures that the leaders of national terrorism are stopped and uprooted,” it added.
The soldiers link that vacuum – along with the political cover extended to some of the occupiers responsible – to troops being wounded and killed in the surrounding unrest.
They asked Zamir for what they called “decisive action to stop and eradicate Jewish terrorism,” and for orders spelling out what they are permitted to do when it unfolds in front of them.
One signatory told Yedioth Ahronoth that what is unfolding in Qusra, where illegal settlers seized Palestinian land, established an outpost, and besieged Palestinian homes, is “not an isolated case, but part of a broader pattern in the West Bank.”
He said Armed settlers “operate with little intervention, while the army often finds itself involved in protecting the actions of an extremist minority instead of enforcing the law.”
“Criminal violence against Palestinians does not enhance security. It puts soldiers at risk, fuels tensions in the region, and harms everyone’s security,” he said.
Israeli authorities logged 660 occupier attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over the first six months of 2026, up 63 percent from the 405 recorded in the same stretch of 2025, Israel’s Public Broadcaster (KAN) reported on 10 August.
Israeli security bodies file these assaults under “nationalistic crime” and “terrorism.”
According to the KAN report, illegal settlers killed six Palestinians and wounded 140 in the first half of 2026, up from 82 wounded and no deaths during the same period in 2025.
A UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found in June that Israeli authorities “had enabled settler attacks through financial and military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law-enforcement bodies,” British outlet Reuters wrote.
The inquiry described masked occupiers carrying out attacks alongside Israeli soldiers who acted as a shield for the violence.
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