Israel’s occupation troops have been instructed by the government to protect Palestinians from the routine attacks they and their property suffer at the hands of extremists and illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank. Although there is more than one community of these violent zealots, the 400 settlers in Hebron are notorious for their acts of violence. Beating up a Palestinian elderly woman in one video, for instance.

Israeli soldiers were once the victims of such abuse. Dressed as Arabs, Israeli soldiers were beaten by Hebron settlers upon entering the town and experiencing firsthand what the Palestinians confront almost daily. International law is clear: an occupation power must provide security to the occupied people.

Israel’s government has started to crack down on settler violence. The point of the dressed Israeli soldiers was to record how the settlers behave. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak once accused the settlers of engaging in a pogrom against the Palestinians and the army. The government has ordered troops to intervene and stop violence.

But Israeli troops, some of them anyway, have not followed orders. In a reflection of both the atavism of Israeli troops, and the religiosity and settler-movement penetration of the army many Israeli troops continue to enable and support the settlers.

Instead of stopping the settlers, the troops often attack Palestinians and arrest them. They also remove human-rights workers and their cameras lest the troops be photographed engaging in illegal and violent behavior...behavior that is, of course, in addition to their already illegal and violent occupation of Palestine. This is mostly to prevent Israeli international embarrassment rather than fear of prosecution in the country where Israeli troops are hardly even held accountable.

The reason that Israeli troops fail to crack down on the settlers even when their government instructs them is simply that a lot of them support them. Many Israeli troops are religious and the settler establishment has built networks within the army. The Rabbins these young men turn to often tell them that if they have to choose between following God, which for them means supporting the illegal settlers, or the government they need to side with the former. Some Israeli troops refuse to uproot illegal outposts for this reason. So even though their relatively secular government tells them to side against the settlers, some soldiers just cannot bring themselves to do so for they identify with such fanaticism.

The following is a video shoot by journalist and activist Joseph Dana. I’ll let him explain:

I just shot and edited a video (see below) of what happen today in Safa in the southern West Bank. Ta’ayush went with about thirty Israeli and international peace activists to help the farmers of Safa work their land. As soon as we arrived we were attacked by settlers throwing rocks at us. Then the IDF came and arrested 7 activists and did not so much as ask the settlers to leave. The activists were later released because the soldiers had violated a Supreme Court ruling from 2006 that states that the IDF must protect the farmers of Safa from settler violence. But the damage was done. This is what Haaretz had to say about it this afternoon.

We later went to hilltop 18 which is the site of the Op-Ed that I published in Haaretz. The IDF quickly ordered the zone to be a closed military zone meaning that all civilians must leave the area or face arrest. We were removed and the settlers at the outpost were not. Clear violations of Israeli law.