Israel's Defense Minister Orders Plan to Shift West Bank Policing From Army to Police

JERUSALEM —

Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, has ordered the military to draw up plans to transfer law enforcement powers over Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank to the police, The Guardian reported. The order came amid mounting criticism, both inside Israel and abroad, that the army has failed to stop a group of settlers besieging three Palestinian families in the village of Qusra.

Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh called the plan a "flagrant violation of international law" and said it would help "entrench the illegitimate annexation of Palestinian land," according to The Guardian. Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, told The Guardian that shifting enforcement to police could mark a major step toward formal annexation, though he noted Katz's statement lacked detail and appeared driven more by politics than policy. "This is a cowardly statement made by a minister of defense who is under scrutiny," Sfard said, arguing the army has struck targets in Syria, Iran and Lebanon but cannot remove "a few Jewish terrorists" from a Palestinian home.

A Six-Day Siege

The standoff in Qusra, a village near Nablus, began Sunday, when settlers surrounded three homes, cut off water and electricity, and prevented residents from leaving, according to Deutsche Welle. One of the homes belongs to Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American who lives in Ohio; his brother and nephew had taken shelter inside before Israeli forces moved them to another house, DW reported. Israel's military said it dismantled two illegal outposts near the homes and detained one Israeli, but did not say whether he faced arrest.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a longtime supporter of the settler movement, called the people besieging the home "terrorists" and said he had asked Israeli police and the army to remove them, according to The Guardian and DW. He also described the group as a "very small minority" of settlers. Gen. Avi Bluth, the Israeli military's commander for the West Bank, visited Qusra a second time on Friday after soldiers retreated from a confrontation with the settlers two days earlier, The Guardian reported. Instead of removing the settlers, troops forced one Palestinian family from its home to use as a base, according to The Guardian.

Annexation Fears Ahead of Elections

The dispute unfolds against a broader surge in settlement expansion. On Thursday, Katz celebrated the reestablishment of Ganim, a settlement evacuated in 2005, telling a crowd there, "Here, this is the land of Israel. Here, we are staying forever," The Guardian reported. Since October 2023, Israel has forcibly displaced 64 entire Palestinian communities and parts of 15 others, affecting nearly 5,000 people, according to data from the Israeli rights group B'Tselem cited by The Guardian.

Analysts told Al Jazeera that settler violence tends to intensify ahead of Israeli elections, set for October, as the far-right coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a possible loss of power. Aida Touma-Sliman, an Israeli lawmaker with the Hadash party, told Al Jazeera that government claims of distance from settler violence are "ridiculous" because "they're complicit." Yair Dvir of B'Tselem told Al Jazeera that "settler violence is state violence," aimed at displacing Palestinians and seizing land.

Separately on Friday, Israeli gunmen fired at a group of roughly 100 Israeli and Palestinian activists trying to reclaim Palestinian land near Beit Sahour, outside Jerusalem, The Guardian reported. Mia Biran of the group Combatants for Peace said a nearby military jeep did nothing as the shooting occurred, and that settlers later threatened to burn a Palestinian home in the area.