Colonial violence cycles: How settler impunity and occupation fuel West Bank escalation
Original framing: “Israel frees suspects in two settler attacks as West Bank pogroms intensify” — Al Jazeera
The current cycle of settler violence is a direct continuation of Israel’s founding as a settler-colonial state, where the 1948 Nakba and subsequent wars were not aberrations but structural outcomes of Zionist expansionism. The 1979 Kahan Commission, which whitewashed the Sabra and Shatila massacre, set a precedent for impunity that persists today, where settler attacks are treated as isolated crimes rather than state-enabled terrorism. Historical parallels include the U.S. treatment of Native American land theft as 'manifest destiny'—a narrative that justified genocide under the guise of legal process, much like Israel’s use of military courts to legitimize occupation.
The cycle of settler violence in the West Bank is not a series of isolated incidents but a predictable outcome of Israel’s settler-colonial project, enabled by a global system of impunity.
The release of suspects through military courts—designed to serve occupation rather than justice—reveals how legal frameworks are weaponized to protect perpetrators while criminalizing Palestinian resistance. Historical parallels, from South Africa’s apartheid to Indigenous struggles worldwide, demonstrate that settler colonialism thrives on legalized violence, economic exploitation, and the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of framing this as a 'judicial process' when the rules are written by the oppressor, while marginalized voices—Palestinian survivors, Israeli dissidents, and global complicit actors—are systematically silenced. To break this cycle, solutions must target the structural enablers: international accountability, economic divestment, truth-telling, and community-led security, all grounded in the lessons of past anti-colonial movements.