The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
Wow Israel really thinks the world will go like “welp it is now a conflict between civilians so the Israeli government can’t be blamed”. I bet they are praying that locals organise a defense against these invader settlers so that they can pretend like they have a good excuse to send troops.
This already happens
Settlers like this have forfeited their status as innocent civilians. This makes them active aggressors in my eyes.
That is literally what they’ve done for many, many decades, let the settlers expand and antagonize, then send in the military to protect the innocent civilians living on Palestinian land.