Plan to Eradicate Jewish Nationalist Terrorism | Peace Now

Plan to Eradicate Jewish Nationalist Terrorism | Peace Now

https://peacenow.org.il/en/plan-to-eradicate-jewish-nationalist-terrorism?fbclid=IwY2xjawTrR3JwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR58r6yA_f8Wx4ShkTjlKgFppBUymlWEKWlfvVX2fpeN6FA6n01rJD-XLwV3Dw_aem_xDHwcDKKS_iHpuq6C9P27Q

Plan to Eradicate Jewish Nationalist Terrorism

13.8.26

Settler attacks against Palestinians in the past two years have escalated into terrorism. These actions harm thousands of Palestinians, damage the reputation of the Jewish people, and undermine Israel’s international standing.

Jewish nationalist terrorism can be stopped. The government must act to prevent attacks, apprehend perpetrators, and ensure they are prosecuted.

Peace Now proposes a five-step plan to eliminate settler violence and terrorism:

1. Prevent attacks on the ground

Establish a joint command center for the IDF Central Command and the Judea and Samaria Police District, in coordination with the Shin Bet, to strengthen intelligence gathering and manage incidents in real time. The center will consolidate field intelligence, employ Arabic-speaking operators to receive incident reports, and immediately deploy forces to prevent attacks and apprehend suspects.

Designate the prevention of settler violence and protection of Palestinian civilians as a high-priority IDF mission. Develop an operational doctrine to allocate and deploy forces to prevent violence, remove and detain rioters, and protect and escort Palestinian farmers in high-risk areas.

Disband regional defense units and reassign their members to standard, integrated reserve units.

2. End public funding and support for illegal settlement farms and outposts

Cancel direct funding, totaling hundreds of millions of shekels, for settlement farms and outposts. This includes the Settlement Division’s “security components for young settlements,” the Ministry of Settlements’ support for land patrol units, the Ministry of Agriculture’s support for organizations that operate volunteer programs on farms, and the Ministry of Agriculture’s grazing grants.

Take action against local authorities that fund or support illegal construction in settlement farms and outposts. Initiate administrative and criminal proceedings against those within the local authorities who are responsible for funding illegal activity. The Minister of Interior will deduct illegally spent funds from local authorities and apply personal liability procedures to those involved.

Cancel all grazing allocations in the West Bank, including those made by the Settlement Division and the Custodian of Government and Abandoned Property in Judea and Samaria.

Revoke Section 46A eligibility from nonprofits that raise funds for illegal outposts and end government participation in financing these donations. The Registrar of Associations will take administrative action against these organizations.

3. ENFORCE! Investigate and prosecute violent settlers

Strengthen intelligence and investigative capacity by adding police positions for investigation and prosecution, and by establishing a procedure for assigning a prosecutor to politically motivated crime investigations.

Issue exclusion orders to bar violent settlers and organizers of terrorism from the West Bank.

Ensure police stations and complaint channels of the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division are accessible to Palestinians by providing physical access and increasing the number of Arabic-speaking investigators to receive complaints.

Transfer footage from military cameras to the police, following the same procedures used in investigations of Palestinian terrorism.

4. EVACUATE! Remove outposts and centers of violence

Enforce planning and building laws in farm outposts and outposts, with priority given to settlement farms. Begin executing demolition orders against illegal construction in outposts.

Develop a plan for the gradual evacuation of illegal farm outposts and outposts. The Minister of Defense will prepare a plan for their gradual evacuation and for preventing their re-establishment, with a focus on centers of violence.

5. SOCIAL AND THERAPEUTIC RESPONSE

Develop a government plan involving the Ministries of Welfare, Education, National Security, and Justice to create a program for at-risk youth in the hills and settlements.

Establish treatment frameworks outside the West Bank to provide care for at-risk youth, away from centers of violence.

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1] How to stop Israel taking over the West Bank? 

2] What would be the role and effectiveness of the Israeli group on the article?

1. Strategies to Stop the Expansion and Annexation of the West Bank

Preventing the de facto and administrative takeover of the West Bank involves coordinated international, legal, domestic, and Palestinian actions:

• Targeted International Sanctions and Pressure

  • Sanctioning Extremist Networks: Expanding targeted financial and travel sanctions against violent settler groups, agricultural outpost developers, and political figures facilitating unauthorized developments.

  • Strict Territorial Differentiation: Rigorously enforcing policies that distinguish between sovereign Israel and settlements in trade agreements, bilateral treaties, and financial investments.

  • Conditioning Military and Diplomatic Aid: Tying international support and bilateral arms transfers to concrete commitments against land expropriation, outpost legalization, and administrative annexation steps in Area C.

• Legal Accountability and International Recognition

  • Upholding International Legal Frameworks: Utilizing rulings and advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to establish legal consequences for settlement expansion and displacement.

  • Bilateral Recognition of Palestinian Sovereignty: Increasing formal diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state to cement the two-state framework and challenge unilateral territorial shifts on the ground.

• Strengthening Palestinian Communities in Area C

  • Direct Support for Vulnerable Areas: Providing financial, legal, and infrastructural support to Palestinian shepherding and farming communities facing displacement pressure from unauthorized outposts.

  • Institutional and Economic Support: Reinforcing local governance and civilian infrastructure to maintain Palestinian presence and economic viability across the territory.

• Empowering Domestic Opposition and Legal Oversight

  • Backing Israeli Democratic Watchdogs: Supporting civil society organizations within Israel that monitor land takeovers, challenge illegal construction in the Israeli High Court, and expose government administrative shifts to the public.

2. Role and Effectiveness of Peace Now and Its Proposed Plan

Role of Peace Now

• Systematic Monitoring and Exposure: As Israel's leading settlement watchdog, Peace Now tracks spatial, budgetary, and administrative developments in the West Bank. They document illegal outpost creation, land declarations, road networks, and structural governance shifts (such as the transfer of Civil Administration powers to political ministers).

• Legal Interventions: Peace Now routinely files petitions with the Israeli High Court of Justice to halt unauthorized construction, challenge the takeover of private Palestinian land, and block state funding for illegal outposts.

• Operational Policy Plans: In initiatives like their plan to combat Jewish nationalist violence, Peace Now outlines specific policy, law enforcement, and judicial measures required of the IDF, police, and security agencies to dismantle violent settler outposts and enforce the rule of law.

Effectiveness and Impact

• High Impact on Global Diplomacy and Transparency: Peace Now provides verified data and mapping that international bodies, foreign governments, and diplomats rely upon to assess changes on the ground. Their reporting forces policy transparency and serves as a primary evidentiary source for international legal and diplomatic actions.

• Domestic Challenge and Political Realities: Within Israel, Peace Now serves as an essential moral and analytical center for the peace and pro-democracy movement. However, their operational effectiveness in halting annexation is significantly constrained by the current political climate in Israel, where key government ministries actively promote settlement expansion. While their proposals provide a legal and policy blueprint for curbing nationalist violence and stopping annexation, implementing those measures ultimately requires political change or sustained

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The attached Peace Now document is important because it points to a distinction that is sometimes obscured in discussion of the West Bank: <settler violence is one instrument of territorial takeover, but it is not the whole process>. The larger process also involves government decisions, settlement planning, roads, public finance, legalization of outposts, land administration, and changes in the machinery governing the occupied territory. Peace Now itself now describes what is happening as accelerating <de facto annexation>.

1. How could Israel's takeover of the West Bank actually be stopped?

In my assessment, four things would have to work together. None is sufficient by itself.

1. <An Israeli government willing to stop the process> is ultimately indispensable. It would need to freeze new settlement approvals and tenders, stop converting unauthorized outposts into recognized settlements, cease public financing of the farm-outpost system, enforce Israeli law against violent settlers, and remove at least the strategically important new outposts. This is precisely where the Peace Now proposal begins: joint police-IDF-Shin Bet enforcement, cutting public funding, prosecution of violent settlers, evacuation of violent outposts, and social intervention with radicalized youth. But the present Israeli government has been moving in the opposite direction. Peace Now counted 86 new outposts and 54 government-approved settlements during 2025, while Reuters reported further major settlement approvals and funding during 2026.
2. <Serious American pressure would probably be the strongest external instrument>. Statements condemning settlements have repeatedly proved insufficient. What would matter is attaching concrete consequences to further annexation: diplomatic protection, economic cooperation, and potentially aspects of security assistance could be conditioned on stopping territorial expansion. This is an inference rather than something Peace Now itself proposes, but the events of this week illustrate the leverage. After settlers besieged Palestinian homes at Qusra, including a Palestinian-American family, unusually sharp American criticism was followed by stronger Israeli military intervention and the dismantling of illegal settler positions. Yet settlers subsequently attempted to return. That suggests that Israeli authorities possess the ability to intervene; the problem is sustained political will.
3. <Europe and other states can raise the economic and legal cost of annexation>. The EU has already sanctioned individual extremist settlers and organizations, including further designations in May 2026, with asset freezes and travel restrictions. A stronger approach would distinguish consistently between Israel inside its internationally recognized pre-1967 territory and economic activities connected to settlements. The ICJ's 2024 advisory opinion concluded that Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and that other states have obligations not to recognize or assist the resulting illegal situation. Such international law matters, but without political and economic enforcement it will not by itself stop settlements.
4. <Palestinian communities must remain physically present on the land while a political solution is pursued>. This is especially important because small agricultural outposts can control surprisingly large areas through grazing, roads, intimidation and denial of Palestinian access. Peace Now reported on 13 August 2026 that settlers had created at least 26 outposts inside Area B and that settlers associated with outposts were preventing Palestinian access to roughly 100,000 dunams even in areas nominally under Palestinian Authority control. Protecting villages, enforcing property rights, permitting Palestinian construction and development, maintaining roads and agricultural access, and preventing forced displacement are therefore just as important as debates over large formal settlements.

There is also an uncomfortable political necessity on the Palestinian side. Attacks on Israeli civilians strengthen the Israeli argument that permanent territorial and military control is required for security, weaken Israel's peace constituency, and make withdrawal politically harder. A successful anti-annexation strategy therefore requires <both effective Palestinian nonviolent political organization and credible Israeli security arrangements>. Recognizing Israel's genuine security concerns does not require accepting settlement expansion as their solution.

The central point is that <international protest without Israeli political change is unlikely to succeed; Israeli opposition without outside pressure is currently too weak>. The combination is what matters.

2. What can Peace Now actually accomplish?

Here I think the attached article is more significant than it first appears.

Peace Now is not simply an outside critic of Israel. It is an Israeli movement founded in 1978 by reserve soldiers and officers and describes itself as an extra-parliamentary movement committed to a negotiated two-state settlement. Since the early 1990s its <Settlement Watch> project has specialized in documenting settlements, outposts, planning decisions, land seizures and government financing. Its information is routinely used by Israeli and international journalists and governments.

I would divide its effectiveness into three different levels.

<First, as a watchdog, Peace Now is highly effective.> This may actually be its greatest present importance. Settlement expansion takes place through hundreds of obscure administrative decisions—planning committees, jurisdictional changes, budgets, roads, state-land declarations and retroactive legalization. Peace Now makes these processes visible. Reuters, for example, relied on Peace Now in reporting the approval of 34 additional settlements in April and the proposed billion-shekel settlement funding package in June 2026. Without organizations doing this work, much of the de facto annexation could proceed with considerably less public scrutiny.

<Second, its legal work sometimes produces concrete results.> Peace Now petitions contributed historically to the evacuation of the Migron illegal outpost, and more recently Israel's Supreme Court ordered police investigations into illegal outpost construction following Peace Now litigation. But these victories also demonstrate its limitation: court orders can be delayed, weakly enforced or overtaken by government policy. In June 2026 Peace Now reported that an investigation ordered by the Supreme Court in 2025 had still not actually been opened.

<Third, as a political force capable of stopping annexation by itself, Peace Now is presently weak.> It has no police, army, administrative authority or parliamentary votes of its own. It can expose, litigate, mobilize and persuade; it cannot evacuate an outpost or cancel a settlement plan. The present governing coalition is pursuing policies almost exactly opposite to Peace Now's program.

The most important limitation of this particular Peace Now proposal

The document is titled <Plan to Eradicate Jewish Nationalist Terrorism>. Its five measures are quite practical and, if a determined Israeli government implemented them, I think they could substantially reduce violent settler attacks: better intelligence and policing, ending government subsidies to illegal farms, prosecution, evacuation of violent outposts and intervention with radicalized young people.

But <it would not by itself stop Israel's takeover of the West Bank>.

That is because the plan attacks <violent and illegal settler activity>, whereas much of de facto annexation is now carried out through <official state policy>: authorized settlements, planning approvals, infrastructure expenditure, administrative reorganization and government-sanctioned land policies. The UN Human Rights Office reported in March 2026 that settlement expansion and annexation measures had accelerated and were contributing to large-scale Palestinian displacement.

So I would describe Peace Now's role this way:

<Peace Now cannot stop annexation, but it can tell Israelis and the world exactly how annexation is being carried out, challenge some parts of it in Israeli courts, provide a practical program for an alternative Israeli government, and preserve an Israeli constituency that can credibly say: “This is not being done in the name of all Israelis.”>

That last function is politically and morally quite important. It prevents the conflict from being simplified into <Israelis versus Palestinians>. The real political struggle also runs <inside Israeli society>: between those who regard permanent Israeli control of the West Bank as necessary or desirable and Israelis such as Peace Now who believe that continuing occupation and settlement expansion ultimately endanger Israel itself.

If I had to identify the <single most realistic mechanism> for stopping the present trajectory, it would therefore be <Israeli political change reinforced by sustained American pressure>. Peace Now and similar Israeli organizations could then become much more consequential, because many of the administrative and law-enforcement measures they are proposing already exist and could be activated by a different government.

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