Thread by @infinite_jaz

🧵A fascinating—and revealing—Hebrew-only piece today in the settlers’ outlet Arutz Sheva, written by extremist settler Elisha Yered, laying out the settlers’ systematic strategy of building illegal outposts on Palestinian land to expand Jewish control of the West Bank.

He starts by noting that every faction of the settler movement—from the violent hilltop youths to the leaders of the official settlement councils—works in close coordination. So much for the idea of a few fringe extremists.

He dives right into the debate I’ve been tweeting about recently: those who believe in ethnic cleansing through authorized, state-backed settlement construction vs. those who believe they need to be completely unshackled from the state to seize land on their own terms.

From my last substack piece: "it’s worth remembering that years ago, before settlers rose to the highest levels of government, the Israeli military often found itself chasing them around the hills of the West Bank, frustrated that they were trying to carry out ethnic cleansing on their own terms. Among those being chased were Smotrich and Ben Gvir themselves, back when they were fringe provocateurs rather than government ministers. Their freelance violence created instability the army had to contain, rather than the more orderly, state-sanctioned version of land theft carried out through official settlement building."

On the Israeli state deciding it wasn’t worth fighting the hilltop movement, and instead choosing to redirect it in more convenient, easier-to-contain directions — allowing settlers to keep moving the goalposts and establish more "facts on the ground."

More on that strategy. Again, can't emphasize enough: The state was always committed to ethnic cleansing via settlement growth — the settlers simply kept pushing it to loosen the leash.

"the farms that began with a single trailer placed under the radar are now proudly emerging in large numbers, receiving official protection from the military. At the field level, fruitful cooperation has been established between them in a variety of areas"

An incredible interpretation of the Oslo Accords in which the settlers, actually, are the ones who got screwed:

Does this look like the strategy of a rogue band of misguided youths?

"In order to control Judea and Samaria, prevent a Palestinian state, and protect the existing settlements, it is simply impossible to be satisfied with settlement blocs and a few strips and 'islands.'"

But forget all that. God promised us all the land, and we will take it.

To the violent settlers being dismissed as “anarchists” by Israeli authorities — I hope you realize you actually have "tremendous public support... everywhere from the people of Israel."

What this piece makes brutally clear is that the old distinction between authorized ethnic cleansing via settlement building and freelance settler violence has collapsed. The state keeps shifting the red lines, settlers now openly push into Area B and “private land,” and each phase of illegal expansion becomes the next phase of official policy.

Here's the piece: inn.co.il/news/682949

Here is the author of the piece—who was suspected of killing a Palestinian teen—boasting about a visit from Nat’l Security Minister Ben Gvir in August. “This is what a minister looks like who advances a true right-wing policy and supports settlement with all his heart!” Also at this meeting was WB police chief Moshe Pinchi, who two months later claimed my photo of a settler clubbing a grandmother “kept him up at night.”