In the past, building settlements was the main strategy of the Zionist agenda. Now, their tactics have shifted into investing in Zionist settler shepherds. Whereas settlements were once confined to the boundaries of their walls, a single shepherd can steal an entire Palestinian hillside. Many of the settler shepherds we interact with in Masafer Yatta are “at risk” youths who dropped out of school or have a criminal record. Over the last two years, the Jewish National Fund invested 1 million shekels (about $1 million USD) in a project designed for so-called marginalized youths, who live in outposts or settlements in the West Bank, to further radicalize them through Zionist propaganda and quasi-military training.
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These young terrorists seize land and natural resources and terrorize Palestinians in an attempt to force them off their land. Under the guise of being simple shepherds, they deploy various tactics of displacement, including cutting off electricity, slashing water tanks, burning crops, stealing or killing livestock, and destroying homes and other infrastructure. I have seen them do each of these these things with my own eyes; it is a daily occurrence in Masafer Yatta.
The line between settler and soldier has become increasingly blurred to the point where there is essentially no difference. Even settler shepherds wear military fatigues, and the majority of the time carry IOF-issued semi-automatic rifles and machine guns. Ben-Gvir recently announced that 100,000 new gun licenses had been been obtained since October 7, 2023, many of them going to militant settlers.
A few years ago, the IOF established a unit called “Desert Frontier” (Sfar Hamidbar in Hebrew) specifically for turning extremist Hilltop Youth settlers into soldiers to further Israel’s apartheid regime. The boys, many of whom are in their early teens, are recruited to enact violence against all non-Jews without the constraints of the already-nebulous Israeli law. They are encouraged to brutalize Palestinians and empowered to preform policing tasks like random searches and arrests.
My organization used to intensively train new volunteers about the various Israeli forces — the factions of police, border patrol, military units, and so on — as well as how to tell the difference between settler militia. While we still go over this information, we now say that it is not too important to distinguish between them. They all have similar power, are all violent, and all want us gone.
The video below depicts two young settler shepherds grazing their flock on Palestinian land. Two police cars, two army vehicles, and one settler security truck showed up, but did not intervene even though it was clear the settlers were destroying newly tilled and sown earth. It is still too early in the season for many Palestinian shepherds to take their flocks out, but the settlers do so anyway, in an attempt to make the land next to Palestinian homes less productive later on. This footage was taken steps away from the front door of a family I stayed with the night prior.