By BADIL
The Israeli regime’s use of colonizers to carry out forced displacement of Palestinians is not a symptom of rogue extremism—it is the infrastructure of its colonial domination. Regardless of deliberate obfuscation, the incitement, arming, protection and impunity provided to colonizers clearly indicates that their role constitutes a foundational policy in the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime. By outsourcing attacks to colonizers, the regime attempts to evade international scrutiny and accountability, disguising its systemic nature. As colonizer assaults escalate across the West Bank and the genocide in Gaza continues, this manufactured blurred distinction between the Israeli regime, its forces and colonizers, attempts to conceal a coherent and unified apparatus of colonial domination. Sanctioning individuals alone is inadequate; the international community, especially States, must impose sanctions on the entire Israeli regime.
The foundations of this policy were initiated pre-Nakba, and carried forward ever since, but escalated significantly in the 1980s during a surge in colonial expansion throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rather than relying solely on overt “military” seizure, the Israeli regime empowered colonizer outposts to further colonial expansion, while avoiding direct condemnation. These actions, largely ignored by the international community, normalized a model where colonizer attacks appeared spontaneous but were structurally embedded and regime-enabled.
This same policy remains central today. Impunity for colonizer attacks and the formal sanctioning of colonizer-established outposts facilitate land theft and have become the norm. In May 2025, the Israeli Minister of War, Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the establishment of 22 new colonies—many originating from such outposts. This exposes the colonizer not as rogue, but as a crucial component of the Israeli regime. Working hand in hand to implement Palestinian forcible displacement and colonial expansion.
In Masafer Yatta, over 2,300 residents have endured decades of colonizer attacks, Israeli forces night raids, home demolitions, forced evictions, road closures, and encirclement by expanding colonies. These practices, intensified under the pretext of a “firing zone” since 2022, have been condemned as a war crime of forcible displacement. These colonizer attacks, as a method of forced displacement, are now being replicated with significant regularity across the West Bank. This escalation did not begin in October 2023. In fact, the first eight months of 2023 saw a record average of three colonizer-related attacks per day—surpassing two per day in 2022 and one in 2021—marking the highest rate since UN tracking began in 2006.
In villages across the West Bank, such as Deir Dibwan, Masafer Yatta, Sinjil, and Turmusayya, armed and often masked colonizers and militias have launched organized assaults on Palestinian homes and communities. These colonizer attacks have now doubled; as of 2025 there has been an average of about seven attacks per day. Eroding access to services, terrorizing residents, and degrading daily life—have one aim: to contribute to the coercive environment that makes Palestinian presence unsustainable and results in their forcible transfer.
When Palestinians attempt to defend themselves or their land, they are summarily suppressed. This convergence of colonial and military suppression was blatantly evident in the assault against Kafr Malik, where colonizers, operating with the Israeli forces, murdered three Palestinians in a coordinated attack. Protection—through physical Israeli force presence, legal shielding, and judicial impunity are one of the mechanisms of regime enablement.
In June 2023, Itamar Ben Gvir openly called for escalation in colonial expansion and Israeli force operations, declaring, “There needs to be a full settlement here. Not just here but on all the hilltops around us.” His call reflects how the Israeli regime empowers colonizers through incitement—demonizing Palestinians and encouraging aggressive actions.
Since 7 October 2023, the regime’s National Security Ministry (headed by Gvir) distributed over 120,000 firearms to the public, supplying armed colonial militias and “Rapid Response Squads” who have carried out systematic attacks on Palestinians, while posing as independent actors. In reality, colonial coalitions like the Yesha Council, Nachala, and Kahanist networks operate in full coordination with Israeli forces. This policy—refined over decades—enables the regime to advance its colonial expansion, while deflecting international accountability by framing colonizer attacks as isolated or extremist.
The purported blurred line between the Israeli regime, its forces, and colonizers is not accidental—it is central to the architecture of erasure. Many colonizers act in the same way as the Israeli forces but are in civilian clothing, to obscure regime responsibility. The Israeli far right, often presented as an extremist fringe, is instrumentalized to mask a broader consensus around ethnic cleansing, externalize blame, and maintain the Israeli regime’s facade as a democratic and legitimate entity.
Western governments, mainstream media, and even segments of civil society help sustain this illusion—condemning “fringe violence” while continuing to fund, support, and normalize the regime that enables it. Self-proclaimed “progressive” Zionist-Israeli officials and civil society groups, who distance themselves from far-right rhetoric, uphold and drive the same Israeli system of domination through forced displacement and transfer, colonization, and apartheid.
Targeted sanctions against figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich do not address the core problem: the Israeli regime’s entire colonial architecture must be confronted. Forcible transfer and displacement systematically amount to crimes against humanity. The regime’s policies—whether enacted by Israeli forces or by armed colonizers acting with impunity—clearly meet these thresholds. Condemning colonizers while maintaining military aid and trade with corporations linked to the Israeli regime enables ongoing crimes. Framing the violence as “intercommunal conflict” erases regime responsibility and provides impunity to ongoing international crimes. This fixation on so-called extremists obscures a deliberate regime tactic: using colonizers as enforcers of displacement allowing structural domination to masquerade as rogue unrest. While the sanctions and prosecutions of individuals are a start, they fail to address the systemic project of colonial domination embedded in the regime, since before its establishment. True accountability requires the imposition of sanctions against the entire apparatus—not just its visible actors.
7 July 2025
Source: badil.org