Eisenkot visits illegal settlement outpost, site of severe assault against Israeli lawyer

During a tour of settlements on Wednesday, former cabinet minister and IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot visited Shuvael, an illegal Israeli farming outpost in the northern West Bank where an Israeli lawyer was handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten by residents last year.

The visit drew criticism from settlement watchdog groups, who urged Eisenkot not to turn a blind eye to the violence carried out by the settlers against the local Palestinian population.

Eisenkot, whose centrist Yashar party is currently polling at 13 seats, visited Shuvael as part of a tour he conducted of settlements in the Samaria district in the northern West Bank.

The Samaria District Council put out a press statement about Eisenkot’s visit, saying he visited the settlements of Bruchin, Peduel, and Ariel, and met with Samaria District Council Chariman Yossi Dagan.

Dagan has worked assiduously in recent years to expand existing settlements as much as possible, help establish and support illegal outposts such as Shuvael, and lobby the government to legalize existing illegal outposts.

According to the press statement, Eisenkot was “impressed by the developments on the ground and the extent of civil and security activity.”

The Peace Now organization, which campaigns against the settlements, was strongly critical of Eisenkot’s visit.

“Gadi, it’s great that you went to see what’s happening in the territories. We’re happy you chose to visit one of the most violent farms in the territories and saw up close the remnants of the Palestinian community they expelled with violence and threats,” the organization said sarcastically.

“You probably were also able to get an impression of how neglected the olive trees in the area are because all the farmers can no longer really reach their lands, because if they get close they get beaten up,” Peace Now added, and urged him to watch a Channel 13 report on the assault of Azat Ottman.

In June 2025, Ottman, an Israeli lawyer hired by a Palestinian upon whose land Shuvael was illegally built, went to the outpost to review the situation for his client.

Footage obtained by Channel 13 shows residents of the outpost, young religious men, denying him entry and telling him that “only Jews can enter here.”

He was also denied entry by an IDF soldier at the site.

The settlers forced him out of the car, handcuffed and blindfolded him, beat him, and eventually dropped him off at a nearby IDF base.

A spokesperson for Eisenkot declined to comment on the matter.

According to Peace Now, Shuvael was established in 2024 southwest of Ariel, right next to a Palestinian Bedouin community that was forced to leave due to violence and harassment from the outpost residents.

Illegal outposts, especially farming outposts, are frequently used as forward staging posts for extremist settler activists to attack nearby rural Palestinian communities in order to displace them from the land, a pattern that has been repeated dozens of times in recent years across the West Bank.

Extremist settler violence has become rife in the West Bank, with reports of assaults, vandalism, arson, theft of property, or other forms of harassment and intimidation against Palestinian residents on a daily basis.