Subsidized Dispossession

The violence gripping the West Bank has been intentionally ratcheted up: between November 11 and 24, 2025, there were 175 settler attacks, 437 arrests, 202 military and temporary checkpoints, and 732 military invasions across Palestinian governorates in the West Bank. These figures represent not isolated incidents, but a coordinated intensification of zionist violence that operates in direct tandem with the Israeli government to animate expansion policy.

The correlation between settlement expansion and settler violence is neither coincidental nor organic. On December 8, 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced an unprecedented allocation of 2.7 billion shekels (approximately $843 million) over five years designated explicitly for expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. This funding package represents what even Israeli media has characterized as de facto annexation , encompassing the construction of new settlements, the relocation of military bases to northern West Bank areas, and the establishment of “absorption clusters” — sites of 20 mobile homes each designed to form new settlement nuclei.

This policy framework finds its violent expression on the ground. Just days before this announcement, the Israeli district court rejected a petition filed by residents of Um al-Khair village, effectively permitting ongoing construction at an unauthorized outpost despite the absence of any zoning plan, building permits, or legal authorization under Israeli law. The court’s ruling came after settlers had already installed seven caravans in violation of the area’s master plan. During the land-clearing operations for this outpost in July, a village resident was shot and killed by a settler while documenting the events from dozens of meters away.

This is just one instance amongst a prolonged surge of violence across the West Bank. The documented incidents reveal a pattern of zionist violence that targets Palestinian communities with apparent impunity, often with the implicit or explicit support of Israeli military forces.

In the early hours of November 23rd, while the Arab al-Melihat community northwest of Jericho slept, settlers descended on their homes. For nearly an hour beginning at 2:10 AM, they raided the al-Melihat family residence. When they found themselves unable to steal a private vehicle, they pushed it into the valley below. Before withdrawing, they destroyed the family’s solar panels. They made off with chickens and vehicle keys — the kind of nocturnal terrorization designed not merely to steal but to shatter any sense of safety or permanence.

That same day in Masafer Yatta, the violence took a more direct form. Settlers descended on Nasser Khalil Nawaja’a and beat him severely, leaving visible bruises across his body. They slashed the tires of agricultural tractors and moved through the area, attacking the homes of the Muhammad, Saddam, and Abu Qubaita families, shattering windows as they went. Elsewhere in the Hebron governorate, settlers from the Shimoun outpost used their vehicle as a weapon, deliberately ramming a car carrying three Palestinian citizens.

The attacks extended to Palestinian livelihoods in ways both visible and insidious. In the village of al-Mughayyir near Ramallah, settlers poisoned the sheep belonging to Rizq Abu Naim, killing three animals from his herd. Such targeting of pastoral agriculture represents a form of economic warfare, an assault on the very means by which Palestinian families have sustained themselves on this land for generations.

Perhaps most chilling was the assault near the Khan al-Ahmar junction east of Jerusalem, where settlers attacked a Bedouin gathering and beat a child named Amer Daoud Abu Dahuk. He had been doing what children in his community have done for centuries: herding sheep. The targeting of a child engaged in traditional pastoral life reveals the generational dimension of this violence, an attempt to sever not just present connection to the land but future possibility itself.

Infrastructure of separation

Frontier settlers represent just one vector in the zionist architecture of control. While they may be the capstone, they remain wholly dependent on the physical infrastructure beneath them, the checkpoint system through which all Palestinian movement and life must pass.

The checkpoint matrix operates as both a mechanism of control and a site of violence. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have imposed a complete closure on all West Bank governorates, randomizing the ability of Palestinian residents — including permit holders — to enter Jerusalem or Israel for travel, healthcare, work and emergency services. The data indicates an average of more than 14 temporary checkpoints established daily, supplementing permanent military installations. At these checkpoints, Palestinians face not only delays and humiliation but lethal force: on November 24, occupation forces shot and wounded two Palestinian workers — Azmi Riyad Awad and Imad Ribhi Rajab — as they attempted to cross near the separation wall at al-Ram to reach their jobs in Jerusalem.

The data collected over the last two weeks (November 11-24, 2025) shows that the Israeli state implemented 202 military and temporary checkpoints across the West Bank. A rapid survey conducted by OCHA in early 2025 identified 849 movement obstacles that permanently or intermittently restricted the movement of 3.3 million Palestinians across the West Bank. These include 94 permanently staffed checkpoints, 205 road gates, and hundreds of earthmounds, trenches, and roadblocks. Coupled with the 712-kilometer Apartheid Wall, this infrastructure fragments Palestinian territory into isolated enclaves where the Israeli permit system can then monetize the Palestinian bodies: Israeli travel permits for Palestinians can cost over $1,000 a month.

The restrictions intensified dramatically in November. Thousands of Palestinians have been affected by increased Israeli military and settler activity in the Hebron governorate since November 23. A checkpoint outside Shuhada Street in Hebron’s H2 area has remained closed since that date, further restricting the approximately 7,000 Palestinians living in the area. Israeli forces have closed about a dozen primary and secondary roads, imposing severe movement restrictions across the governorate and enforcing open-ended curfews.

For Palestinian workers, the closure regime has proven lethal. Israel has killed 14 Palestinian workers and wounded another 200 trying to cross the wall since October 2023, when Israeli authorities revoked almost all permits. The killings occurred while workers were chased, beaten, shot, or fell from the eight-meter Apartheid Wall by Israeli soldiers and border police. Since the start of 2025, the Israeli state has shot at least 106 Palestinians in their legs as workers tried to make it to their jobs.

The NAD data documents two such shootings on November 24 alone. At 13:30 and 22:50, occupation forces guarding the wall at al-Ram opened fire on workers attempting to reach jobs in Jerusalem, wounding Azmi Riyad Awad and Imad Ribhi Rajab.

The economic devastation compounds the physical confinement. Before October 7, Israel issued about 140,000 work permits for Palestinians. Today, only 8,600 permits remain valid for work inside Israel — and construction, which previously employed 90% of Palestinian workers in Israel, has been excluded entirely.

This system of closure directly serves the settlement project. The same week Smotrich announced $843 million for settlement expansion, thousands of Palestinians found themselves unable to reach workplaces, olive groves, and hospitals. The checkpoints do not merely control movement — they enforce a geography of separation in which Palestinian presence is rendered conditional and expendable. This physical separation, in turn, creates the needed space for the zionist settler movement to destroy trees and agricultural land, poison livestock, and erect new outposts.

Funding the zionist movement

The broader zionist movement doesn’t run on religious fervor alone. It needs financial and ideological support. Between 2019 and 2023, over 300 Zionist organizations in the United States reported total revenues of $24.77 billion on their IRS Form 990s. That’s nearly $5 billion annually flowing through tax-exempt institutions whose missions range from ideological and political support to the direct funding of illegal settlement expansion.

These organizations span a wide spectrum. On one end sit the Jewish Federations, umbrella organizations that channel donor dollars into programs like Birthright Israel — which brings young American Jews on free trips designed to cultivate Zionist identity — and Friends of the IDF, which provides direct support to Israeli soldiers. On the other end are organizations like the Hebron Fund and the Central Fund of Israel, which openly finance settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, subsidizing the very infrastructure that international law deems illegal.

Yet even this staggering sum understates the scale of American institutional support for Israel. Churches and religious organizations are exempt from filing 990 forms, meaning their financial contributions remain invisible in public records. Christian Zionist institutions provide not only ideological support through End Times theology but material assistance as well, including direct funding for settlement projects and lobbying efforts that shape U.S. foreign policy.

For context, consider what the U.S. government provides directly. The baseline annual military aid to Israel stands at $3.8 billion under a memorandum of understanding through 2028. Since October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $16.3 billion in additional direct military aid. The $17.9 billion spent in the year following October 7 is by far the most significant amount of military assistance to Israel in a single year.

In other words, U.S. nonprofits mobilize resources on a scale comparable to — and in some years exceeding — direct government military assistance. This private funding apparatus operates with full tax-exempt status, meaning U.S. taxpayers effectively subsidize it through forgone revenue.

The question is unavoidable: Why should organizations that fund illegal settlements, support foreign military forces, or advocate for policies that violate international humanitarian law retain their 501(c)(3) status? It is time to challenge the charitable designation of institutions whose work directly finances the erasure of Palestinian life.