Settlers: It's a word that the White House has focused heavily on over the last week and one which provokes a visceral response from the Israeli government.
So strong is the pushback to any criticism of settlers that Israel's influential finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, this week accused US President Joe Biden of engaging in an "anti-Semitic lie".
Joe Biden and anti-Semitic in the same sentence?
The term "anti-Semitic" is used a lot these days. Often justifiably, but sometimes to try to shut down any legitimate criticism of Israel by making people fearful that if they dare to criticise the Israeli government or its army they will be branded as anti-Semitic – in other words, haters of Jews.
Having one of Israel's most influential ministers claiming Biden is involved in an anti-Semitic lie when it comes to criticism of settlers takes the accusation of anti-Semitism to a new level. After all, despite saying that Israel has been engaging in "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza, Biden has approved the daily supply of the bombs being used in that indiscriminate bombing.
So why are settlers at the centre of international debate?
Who are settlers?
First, who are "settlers"? Settlers is the term given to Israelis who decide to live in the occupied West Bank, which is also known by countries such as Australia as the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Biden has just signed an executive order authorising sanctions on four demonstrably violent settler leaders.
It appears that the reason he has suddenly sanctioned settlers, many of whom have been engaging in violent behaviour towards Palestinians for years, is because he's under huge pressure from Arab Americans.
Biden may well lose states such as Michigan in November's presidential election because Arab American voters — traditionally Democratic voters — are angry about the president's support for Israel's war in Gaza.
Many Arab Americans are talking about staying home on election day, denying a voting block that could make the difference between the Democrats holding Michigan and losing it.
But in the longer term, over many years Washington has been concerned about Israel's expansion of settlements.
The reason for this is that every new settlement – there are an estimated 600,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank – makes it harder for there to be a Palestinian state.
Why are violent settlers not being arrested?
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he's committed to ensuring Jewish settlers in the West Bank adhere to the law.
On the vast and publicly available evidence, this is a highly questionable claim.
One of my reasons for doubting this claim is a conversation I had with Yuval Diskin, then head of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet.
In 2010, I was invited along with a small group of foreign journalists to a rare briefing with Diskin. He said one of his major concerns was extremist Jewish settlers who were openly committing violence against Palestinians. He said Shin Bet knew who they were.
I asked the obvious question: If the security service knew who they were, then why didn't it arrest them?
That was a question for the Netanyahu government, he replied.
It was clear what he was saying: The government did not want the settlers known to be committing violence to be arrested. Shin Bet could identify them – all it needed was the nod from Israel's law enforcement leadership. The settlers have, in effect, enjoyed immunity for years.
Diskin also said Israel should urgently move to offer a peace deal to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank; Diskin's view was that by delivering a state to the Palestinians in the West Bank and shutting out Hamas until they renounced violence, Israel would be rewarding the moderates and punishing the militants.
Instead, under Netanyahu the authority of the moderates was undermined with each new settlement. Palestinians watched the land earmarked by the UN in 1947 for a Palestinian state being taken by settlers, and realised the Palestinian Authority had no clout.
International law is clear
Israel's settlement push has been decades in the making. One of the founders of Israel's settler movement – Daniella Weiss – once told me for a Four Corners program that she and one-time minister of construction and housing Ariel Sharon deliberately located new settlements to try to make it impossible for there ever to be a Palestinian state.
The dominant Israeli perspective on settlements is this: The West Bank, which Israelis often call by its biblical name Judea and Samaria, was always part of Eretz Israel, or the Land of Israel. The more religious Israelis say it was given to the Jewish people by God. The less religious say it should always have been part of modern Israel, and that when the United Nations General Assembly voted in 1947 to divide the British Mandate into two new countries — a Jewish state and an Arab state, Palestine — this parcel of land should have been part of the new Jewish state.
The dominant Israeli view, reflected by politicians such as Netanyahu, is that settlers are merely correcting an error by the international community.
The dominant Palestinian perspective is this: Settlers are taking land (often privately-owned Palestinian land) set aside for a Palestinian state. They argue that there is an inherent injustice in the way Israel is actively encouraging Israelis to move into the Palestinian Territories with tax concessions and cheap housing.
Part of that unfairness, they argue, is that while many Palestinian homes are bulldozed by Israel or destroyed by settlers, some settlers have three potential homes. The Palestinians argue that a Jewish person in a city like Melbourne or New York has their current home, a home in Israel should they so choose (any Jewish person is entitled to move permanently to Israel) and then a third potential home: as a settler in the Palestinian Territories. They argue that it is inherently unfair that a Jewish person has three possible homes while they are not guaranteed the security of one given the frequency of demolition of Palestinian homes.
International law makes clear that an occupying power — as Israel is in the West Bank — should not move its civilians into the territory they occupy. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Loading...The power of a gun
There has been a surge in violence by settlers since October 7. The reality for Palestinians is that the settlers are heavily armed. Any settler who says that they feel in danger is entitled to get a gun from the Israeli army.
Increasingly, soldiers are also settlers. It's often impossible to tell who is who. The effect is the same: Palestinians are not allowed to carry weapons, so on a daily basis a soldier or settler has power over them. The power of a gun.
I saw this up close last week. I was with an ABC team in the Palestinian village of Kusra interviewing the mayor in an olive grove when two settlers on a quad bike rode up and shouted at us, demanding to know who we were.
The fact that they were armed with an M-16 gave them power over us. We were careful not to make any move that they could mistake, or claim, was threatening to them.
Had they decided to open fire on us they would almost certainly not have been prosecuted as long as they said that they felt threatened by one of our team. They could always say that they thought someone in our van was reaching for a gun. Rarely is there a prosecution of a settler for anything.
A short time later, two soldiers who were patrolling the settlement arrived. The soldiers told the mayor that he should not have been giving us, foreign journalists, a tour of the olive field.
That's worth reflecting on: two Israeli soldiers who are protecting what under international law is an illegal settlement were telling a Palestinian mayor that he should not be giving foreign media a tour of a Palestinian olive grove.
Settlers know they have virtual immunity
Since October 7, in the West Bank the Israeli army has killed 382 Palestinians and wounded 4,250, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. (In Gaza, 27,238 Palestinians have been killed and 66,452 wounded.)
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), since October 7, settlers have forced 611 Palestinian adults and 352 children from their homes. Nine Palestinians have been killed by settlers – not one of the killers is likely to be brought to be convicted of any of the murders, based on past records showing that rarely will a settler be convicted for murdering a Palestinian, cutting down their olive groves or forcing them from their homes.
ACRI reported that on average there are three acts of violence a day by settlers against Palestinians. ACRI documented that on October 19, five settlers invaded the home of an elderly Palestinian man in the village of Radhem, beat him and threatened more violence if he did not leave his home within five days.
ACRI reported that the day after the elderly man was bashed and warned, settlers burnt down a home in Nu'eimeh.
Settlers know they have virtual immunity for such actions. I remember meeting a settler in a cafe in Jerusalem. I'd only just arrived in Israel so was struck to see someone sitting next to me with a Glock on his belt.
He told me he had moved from New York to "Judea and Samaria". When I asked him how he was enjoying his new life, he said, pointing to his Glock: "I love it here. There's no way I could walk around New York with one of these!"
"One of these" gives him all the power when he walks past a Palestinian in the West Bank.
All of which is why Biden's executive order against four settlers will probably be meaningless.
He may hope that it wrests back support of the Arab American community, but as long as the Israeli government so forcefully supports settlers going into the West Bank – with tax benefits and the gift of free guns – settlements will continue to make a Palestinian state increasingly difficult.
And as long as a prime minister allows his finance minister to throw the accusation of anti-Semitism in the direction of the most pro-Israel president for many years, there is no hope that the settlement enterprise can be wound back.