Tempers flare in controversial Knesset hearing on West Bank civil rights activists

Subcommittee chair MK Succot accuses pro-Palestinian activists of ‘severe violence,’ while Labor MK Kariv alleges hearing is a ‘smokescreen’ for settler violence

Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Chairman of the West Bank sub-committee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee MK Tzvi Succot gestures to Labor MK Gilad Kariv to leave a hearing on alleged unlawful activity of civil rights and pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank, March 12, 2024. (Noam Moskowitz, Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)
Chairman of the West Bank sub-committee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee MK Tzvi Succot gestures to Labor MK Gilad Kariv to leave a hearing on alleged unlawful activity of civil rights and pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank, March 12, 2024. (Noam Moskowitz, Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)

Following requests by right-wing, pro-settlement groups, a subcommittee of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the alleged harassment of security service personnel by civil rights and pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank.

Opposition MKs denounced the hearing as an effort to “silence” campaigners against settler violence, with Labor leader MK Merav Michaeli accusing the chairman of the subcommittee on the West Bank, MK Tzvi Succot of the ultranationalist Religious-Zionism party, of seeking to “present an upside down and false world” in which campaigners against settler violence were the problem, rather than extremist settlers.

During the hearing, right-wing and pro-settlement organizations, together with coalition MKs, alleged that civil rights campaigners and pro-Palestinian activists, whom they termed “anarchists,” were conducting a coordinated campaign to inflame tensions in the West Bank and smear the settlement movement.

Backing these claims, a senior police commander in the police’s Judea and Samaria district said during the hearing that some 50 percent of complaints over settler violence turned out to be false.

But Michaeli and fellow Labor MK Gilad Kariv accused Succot of using committee hearings to create “a smokescreen” designed to obscure extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Tempers flared during the hearing as the coalition and opposition MKs shouted at each other and traded barbs, with Kariv eventually ejected from the hearing by the subcommittee chair.

Coalition and opposition MKs argue heatedly during a hearing on alleged unlawful activity of civil rights and pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank, March 12, 2024. (Noam Moskowitz, Office of the Knesset Spokesperson)

The second hour of the hearing was closed to the public and press.

Persistent and ongoing violence and harassment carried out by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has led Israeli organizations and loose associations of activists to go out into the territory in recent years to document such attacks.

This frequently leads to clashes between the activists and the settlers, as well as confrontations between the activists and security forces.

Although severe violence by extremist settlers against activists and Palestinians has been documented on numerous occasions, including beatings and shootings, little if any footage of violence carried out by civil rights activists has been seen.

Speaking in Tuesday’s committee hearing, Judea and Samaria District Central Unit police commander Avishai Muallem said there were 191 complaints of settler violence in the South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank in 2023, of which he said 50 percent turned out to be false.

He added that there were another 70 such complaints regarding incidents in the Jordan Valley region. He said that half of these complaints, too, were false.

Coalition MKs jumped on Muallem’s figures, arguing the incidents of false complaints demonstrated a malicious attempt by civil rights campaigners to besmirch the settler movement.

“They [pro-Palestinian activists] are aggressive to IDF soldiers, to settlers, they damage property, they blacken Israel’s name around the world, engage in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel and damage our image,” said far-right MK Limor Son Har Melech of the Otzma Yehudit party.

File: Israeli soldiers stand guard while Palestinians and left wing activists protest in the village of Beit Dajan in the West Bank, on June 30, 2023. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

But Eran Nissan, CEO of the Mehazkim progressive activism organization who also spoke during the hearing, expressed skepticism, arguing that if the police had determined complaints against settlers to be false then indictments against those making such claims would have been filed.

Muallem told The Times of Israel that no pro-Palestinian civil rights activists were indicted in 2023, while 16 indictments were served against Israelis for “nationalist crimes” in the West Bank.

No figures were presented to the committee for alleged violations of the law by civil rights and pro-Palestinian activists.

Opening the hearing, Succot said, “So much unnecessary talk has been said in the past about ‘settler violence’ but no one has dealt here in this house until now with those who are really doing great and severe violence in Judea and Samaria — left-wing, anarchist and extremist activists who harass IDF soldiers and the heroic settlers.”

It would be impossible for Israel to prevail in the war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza “without fighting against those who do everything they can to interfere with our just war,” said Succot, who was arrested on at least four occasions for suspected radical activity before becoming a Knesset member.

During the hearing, the Documenting and Monitoring Unauthorized Activities (DMU) organization, which had called for the hearing, screened a presentation with video footage of pro-Palestinian activists harassing and verbally abusing soldiers and others.

DMU head Amit Barak focused in particular on foreign campaign groups such as the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement that send activists to the West Bank.

Alex Povolotsky, an activist with the Jordan Valley Activists group, bleeds profusely after being assaulted, allegedly by extremist settlers, in the Palestinian hamlet of Farasiya in the West Bank, December 4, 2023. (Courtesy Jordan Valley Activists)

During his comments, Muallem also gave police figures for settler violence in the West Bank since October 7, saying there had been 270 such attacks since the beginning of the war, compared to 527 in the same period in 2022.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded far higher levels of settler violence, reporting 221 attacks in the 23 days following October 7, along with 103 attacks in November and 89 in December.

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