The settlers are not some sort of anomaly; they’re standard operating procedure. Keep in mind the following editorial is from an Israeli newspaper. From Haaretz at archive.ph:
Israeli settlers attempt to disrupt the harvest of olive groves by Palestinian farmers in the West Bank town of Silwad, in October.Credit: Nasser Nasser/AP
If in fact they are only a minority, a few dozen Jewish settlers who are destroying olive groves, wounding harvesters, torching homes, cars and mosques and driving communities from their homes, their output is impressive – more than two attacks a day on average, by the military’s calculations; more than eight a day in October; more than four a day in the November 4-10 period, according to a meticulous examination by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and about 15 a day according to data reaching the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department.
The latter’s list, unlike the UN agency’s does not include only attacks that resulted in casualties, in olives stolen and branches sawn off. After all, for the Palestinians even a threatening march by a few armed and masked Israelis with a herd of cows and an all-terrain vehicle into a Palestinian spring, grove or tent encampment, or around homes on the outskirts of a community, is a terrifying assault.
Its purpose, like that of the bleeding attacks, is to displace people from their land for the next proud Jewish settlement outpost.
Your land?
Don’t mind if I do.