Settlers filmed establishing new illegal outpost in West Bank under IDF protection
Video shows construction equipment being used to move earth, set up mobile homes; locals say Palestinian man shot by settler in West Bank had leg amputated at Israeli hospital
Israeli settlers began establishing a new illegal outpost near the central West Bank Palestinian village of Turmusaya with military protection, according to footage posted online Friday.
Pictures and videos from the scene published by the Yesh Din rights group showed IDF soldiers guarding construction equipment and securing the movement of mobile homes into the area. According to Yesh Din, the settlers began setting up the outpost days ago.
The government has not formally authorized the construction of a settlement in the area.
“In an operation that appears to have been planned in advance, the army is once again collaborating with settlers to establish illegal farm outposts, which are used to violently expel Palestinians under the auspices of the state,” Yesh Din said in a statement.
Even though unauthorized outposts are illegal under Israeli law, it is common for them to receive support and funding from state bodies tied to the settler movement, including local settlement councils and security squads.
While the international community considers all settlements illegal, Israel differentiates between settlement homes built and permitted by the Defense Ministry on land owned by the state, and illegal outposts built without the necessary permits, often on private Palestinian land. In recent years, though, the government has increasingly sought to regulate the wildcat outposts, rather than demolish them.
Yesterday, settlers established a new farm outpost near the village of #Turmusaya in what appears to be a coordinated operation. Over the past two days, all the farm outposts in the Shiloh Valley area received caravans and prefabricated homes. Once again, the army is cooperating… pic.twitter.com/Yex6wvGplr
— Yesh Din English (@Yesh_Din) April 18, 2025
Last month, the left-wing Peace Now organization reported that a record number of illegal settlement outposts were established in 2024, and the year saw an all-time high for land appropriation.
The organization’s annual review of settlement activity noted that a record 59 illegal outposts, groups of structures not authorized by the government, were set up across the West Bank in 2024, while more land in the territory was declared “state land” — making it available for residential, commercial or agricultural development — than in any year since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.
Also on Friday, doctors at Israel’s Soroka Medical Center were forced to amputate the leg of a Palestinian who was shot the day before by settlers who invaded Palestinian land in the West Bank’s south Hebron hills region, according to Palestinian locals.
The victim, Sa’eed al-Amour, was placed under arrest in his hospital room, which is being guarded by police. Amour’s 15-year-old son, Elias, was also detained at the scene and has not been released.
New footage of the moment Saeed al-Amour, a Palestinian landowner from al-Rakhiz in Masafer Yatta, West Bank, was shot by an Israeli settler.
While the Israeli Occupation Forces arrested his son, they allowed the Israeli settler who shot him to walk freely around the crime… pic.twitter.com/F4IThLitfr
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) April 17, 2025
According to locals, the shooting took place after settlers began work to put up a fence on land owned by Amour.
The incident took place near Khirbet al-Rakiz, and residents said the settler who shot Amour is still in the area and was not detained by police.
The Beyond the Herd solidarity group of Israeli activists identified the shooter as Benjamin Bodenheimer, the security coordinator of the nearby Avigayil outpost.
The IDF did not respond to a request for comment on the incident, which occurred in Masafer Yatta, an area of the south Hebron hills that was the subject of “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary about Israeli demolitions in the West Bank.
The West Bank has seen a spike in violence since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
In the West Bank, the military has undertaken large-scale counterterrorism operations that have killed hundreds of people — the vast majority of them combatants, according to the IDF — and displaced tens of thousands.
Settler violence against Palestinians has also been on the rise. Last month, a group of some 50 Israelis attacked homes in the northern West Bank village of Duma, with three Palestinians reportedly injured as the settlers torched property and assaulted residents.
The Times of Israel Community.