Ariel, with nearly 20,000 inhabitants, is one of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It is next to Huwara, in the heart of the Palestinian territory, on top of a hill, and can only be reached by car or bus along a road fenced on both sides and after the OK of the police checkpoint that inspects each vehicle approaching your driveway.
In Ariel, mistrust is maximum. The “terrorist” violence of the Palestinians is worrying, according to the representative of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Shlomo Neeman. Outside of Ariel and the settlements, however, there is also concern about the violence of some of the settlers.
The Israeli Yesh Din observatory records it, and the data speaks for itself: since October 7, settlers have intensified attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and in 2023 there were up to 242 cases of attacks, burning of homes, cars and further. It has been the “most violent” year since 2006, it is concluded, and returns to the foreground the dilemma regarding a possible reappearance of Jewish terrorism.
“I hope he doesn't come back. I hope it doesn't happen," exclaims Mario Sznajder, emeritus professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, when asked about it, but in parallel he adds that "there is news that among the most extremist settlers, a fanatical minority that follows Rabbi Meir Kahane , who was racist against Arabs and was murdered in 1990, attacks Palestinians. They are called the young people of the hill.”
Nobody knows how many there are. “Dozens, maybe hundreds, but enough to exploit violence,” details Sznajder. And many are concentrated in small settlements in the Huwara area.
One of the young people on the hill is Aviad Frija, the reservist who on November 30 shot and killed Yuval Doron Castleman, a 38-year-old lawyer who intervened with his rifle to stop the three Hamas terrorists who attacked Jerusalem that day. . Frija mistook him for a terrorist. And he shot him, although apparently he was on his knees with his shirt open trying to identify himself. He limited himself to saying on television that it was his duty to kill the terrorists and that he was a young man from the hill.
“The settlers are mostly not terrorists; They can be nationalists, and even supremacists, but not terrorists. The young people of the hill have no qualms about pulling out a weapon if a rock is thrown at them. For the majority of Israeli public opinion, they are terrorists, fanatics, racists and xenophobes,” says Sznajder.
The young people on the hill are worrying, however, because they are aligned with the approaches of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the current Minister of Security in the Government of Beniamin Netanyahu, the same one who has relaxed the criteria for Israeli civilians to be able to carry weapons. And its effect is evident in the number of shoulder rifles that abound in the streets.
Adva Oved runs a candy, ice cream and coffee shop in Ariel, and says that in the settlement they get along well with the Arab neighbors, but she admits that there is violence, “which comes from before Gaza,” she explains, “and “especially it occurs in the mountains further inland.” “In Ariel it has stopped now, but it is always a 'today some hit, then others,'” she summarizes. Leonid, another resident of this settlement full of parks and low houses almost identical to each other, adds: “On the road there are sometimes problems due to stones or gunshots. Although it is worse in the settlements that are further inland.”
The situation is a give and take between violent people on one side and the other, everyone repeats, “in which it is the civilians who end up being the victims. Most of the acts of the hill youth are symbolic and spread hatred,” continues Professor Sznajder.
There is fear, however, of returning to the drama experienced in parallel to the peace talks of the 1990s, when Baruch Goldstein, an Orthodox Jewish doctor and Zionist fundamentalist from a settlement in Hebron, murdered 29 Muslims who were praying in the mosque of Ibrahim, also sacred to Jews because it is the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
In Degania, in Israel's first kibbutz, a small agricultural community located near Jordan and Syria, Aner Wacobe, a former military man in the West Bank, told this newspaper that “the problem is that there are 15% on each side who do harm to everyone.” ”. In Jerusalem, Aram Khatchadourian, a tour guide now out of work, said: “There are fanatics everywhere.” And Yossi Beilin, architect of the Oslo peace agreements between Israelis and Palestinians in the 1990s, summed it up to La Vanguardia in Tel Aviv with “the biggest challenge is what to do with the half a million settlers on the Palestinian side.” ”. It seems.
