High Court knocks IDF over failure to protect Palestinians from settler violence

The High Court of Justice issues a conditional order against the commander of the IDF’s forces in the West Bank Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth and the head of the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration department Brig. Gen Hisham Ibrahim, ordering them to justify why they had failed to protect a group of Palestinian farmers in the Jordan Valley from harassment and violence by settlers.

The court order specifies in particular Moshe Sharvit, the manager and resident of an illegal outpost in the region close to the West Bank settlement of Hamra, and asks the IDF and the Civil Administration why they do not use their authority to bar Sharvit from entering the land and dwelling area of the Palestinian farmers who filed the petition.

The court also asks the IDF and Civil Administration to justify their failure to take effective measures to stop Sharvit from encroaching on land which he is not entitled to work.

And the court asks the IDF and Civil Administration to justify their failure to guarantee access for the Palestinian farmers to their land and their ability to work it. The order mentions specifically a gate built on an access road in the area, allegedly by Sharvit, which has blocked the farmers from accessing their own land.

Sharvit established his illegal farming outpost in 2020 and put up the gate blocking the Palestinian farmers’ access to their land in October 2023, while serially harassing the farmers.

According to the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) which filed the petition, IDF soldiers who Sharvit called when Palestinian farmers sought to reach their own land order the farmers off their own land.

In March 2025, a court issued restraining orders against Sharvit over his actions toward the local Palestinians, but ACRI said he violated the order three days later.

Sharvit has previously been hit with sanctions by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and the United States for his violent conduct toward Palestinians in the area, although the US sanctions were subsequently removed.

“The military’s failure to act is not passivity – it is complicity,” says Noa Sattath, ACRI’s Executive Director. “Soldiers have repeatedly arrived on the scene at Sharvit’s request and ordered Palestinian landowners off their own land. That is not law enforcement. That is the enforcement of lawlessness. Amid the military and police failure to act, we are determined to use every tool we have to end settler violence — also by targeting violent settlers.”