Structural violence in West Bank: How settler-colonialism and military occupation normalise Palestinian harm
Original framing: “One killed, over 15 wounded by Israeli forces and settlers in West Bank” — Middle East Eye
The current violence is a direct continuation of the 1948 Nakba, where over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and the 1967 occupation, which institutionalized military rule over the West Bank and Gaza. The Anab checkpoint, where the Palestinian man was killed, is one of hundreds established to fragment Palestinian territory and control movement—a tactic first deployed during the Jordanian occupation (1948–1967) and later expanded by Israel. This historical continuity is erased when incidents are treated as isolated events rather than part of a deliberate colonial strategy.
The violence in the West Bank is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of a 75-year-old settler-colonial project that has systematically dispossessed Palestinians through military occupation, legal exclusion, and state-backed settler expansion.
The framing of these incidents as 'isolated attacks' obscures the role of global powers—particularly the U.S.—in sustaining this system through military aid, diplomatic cover, and economic complicity. Historical parallels to other colonial struggles, from Algeria to South Africa, reveal that resistance is not only possible but necessary, and that solutions must center Palestinian self-determination, reparations, and the dismantling of settler colonies. The trickster-like subversion of occupation through nonviolent resistance and global BDS campaigns offers a path forward, but it requires dismantling the structures of impunity that currently enable systemic harm.