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Israeli soldiers who served in the West Bank have told the newspaper Haaretz that reservists drawn from armed settlers, and organized into so-called regional defense units, have increasingly operated outside military command, intimidating soldiers sent to enforce orders and, in some cases, threatening or attacking Palestinians.
The regional defense units, created within the Israeli military to protect Israeli settlers and respond to emergencies, have taken on a larger role in the West Bank since October 2023, according to the report. Haaretz found that the military has grown more reliant on these reserve battalions, whose ranks are drawn from settlers the newspaper describes as having seized Palestinian land.
Soldiers who spoke to Haaretz said members of the regional defense units, despite formally answering to the military, had effectively established their own authority in the field. Testimony gathered by the paper, including accounts given to the Israeli veterans' organization Breaking the Silence, indicated that members of these units were "allowed to act as an independent force."
According to the accounts, soldiers who tried to enforce military orders against settlers were at times threatened or attacked by the same men they were meant to be commanding alongside.
A reserve officer identified by Haaretz only as "C," who commanded a unit south of Hebron in 2024, described repeated incidents in which settlers living on a farm near a military post raided the homes of Palestinian families in nearby villages. "They would enter homes and sit there, causing chaos," the officer said.
The officer recounted responding to a complaint from a Palestinian family and confronting the settlers at one of the homes. When he asked them to leave, he said, a dog was set on him and tried to bite him. He said a man who identified himself as a member of the regional defense unit and the farm's owner then threatened to falsely accuse him of sexual harassment if he reported the incident to his superiors.
The officer said he documented the encounter on his body camera and reported it up the chain of command but received no support from senior officers. "The next day, the brigade commander called that settler to appease him, but wouldn't even speak with me," he said. He added that his company and battalion commanders later organized a reconciliation session on the grounds that the regional defense personnel were carrying out "a sacred mission."
A second reserve officer, identified as "D," told Haaretz that operations in the area rarely targeted militant activity. "We are not preventing terrorism. It's a huge farce. During our entire service in this area, we detained maybe two people in Hebron allegedly linked to Hamas. The rest of our time was devoted to dealing with Jews looking for provocations. We spend the whole day chasing after settlers from one incident to another, and they pay no attention to us at all," he said.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military has enlisted about 5,500 settlers into regional defense battalions to serve as reserve forces in West Bank settlements and near Palestinian villages, according to Haaretz. The newspaper said it had documented cases in which members of these units were involved in violence, threats and property damage against Palestinians.
Haaretz reported that in March, settlers attached to regional defense battalions were involved in two separate incidents in which three Palestinians were shot dead. In April, a member of one of the units killed a Palestinian in the village of Deir Jarir near Ramallah. In May, a regional defense soldier opened fire indiscriminately at Palestinian homes in the al-Arroub refugee camp; other soldiers who witnessed the incident said the man was drunk, according to the report.
Separately, data cited from the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission indicate that settlers have carried out roughly 12,500 attacks in the West Bank since Israel launched its offensive in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 82 Palestinian deaths, 890 fires and the establishment of 200 unauthorized outposts. Official Palestinian figures put the death toll from Israeli military and settler attacks in the West Bank over the same period at more than 1,182, with roughly 13,000 people wounded and 24,600 detained.
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