On July 28, 2025, an Israeli settler shot Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen within the chest, inflicting accidents that later proved deadly. The assault was captured on video, and the shooter was recognized as Yinon Levi, a settler beforehand sanctioned by the European Union, the UK and america below the Biden administration.
Hathaleen, aged 31, was a beloved activist and instructor from Masafer Yatta within the South Hebron Hills. He additionally performed a supporting function in the Oscar-winning movie No Different Land, which depicts the story of his village, subjected to relentless assaults from settlers and settler-aligned troopers for many years.
Hathaleen’s killing is way from remoted. He’s certainly one of greater than 1,000 Palestinians killed within the West Financial institution for the reason that genocide in Gaza started in October 2023. This surge in violence coincides with a pointy rise in Palestinian land seizures and residential demolitions. The Israeli authorities has used the genocide in Gaza as cowl to speed up its takeover plans for the West Financial institution. Simply days earlier than getting into its three-month summer season recess, the Israeli Knesset handed a non-binding movement to annex your complete territory.
The Knesset’s movement comes one yr after the July 2024 Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories it seized in 1967 is against the law and should finish. The court docket ordered the Israeli regime to dismantle settlements, present reparations and facilitate the return of displaced Palestinians, setting September 2025 because the deadline.
Within the months main as much as the ICJ ruling, international locations together with Australia, France, the UK and Canada introduced sanctions on a handful of settlers and entities concerned within the settlement enterprise. Hathaleen’s killer, Yinon Levi, was amongst these sanctioned. But, as anticipated, journey bans and monetary restrictions imposed by these international locations have had no influence on the bottom. Levi continued his assaults on Palestinians from his unlawful settler outpost, working below full military safety.
Not solely have these sanctions had no influence, however by singling out just a few settlers slightly than addressing the broader equipment of settler colonialism, additionally they enable the Israeli regime to flee accountability by presenting settler violence as an aberration slightly than an extension of state coverage.
By intentionally distinguishing between “extremist” settlers and the remainder of the Israeli regime, states implement token measures that allow them to posture as defenders of worldwide regulation whereas avoiding any confrontation with the regime itself.
The truth is that Israel operates as a settlement enterprise, and its state coverage has all the time been to develop its territory throughout all of Historic Palestine and past, as demonstrated by the occupation of components of southern Syria and Lebanon over the past two years.
Right this moment, greater than 700,000 settlers reside within the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem throughout greater than 250 settlements and outposts, all of which violate worldwide regulation and are sustained by state infrastructure, safety forces and planning businesses. This growth has been enabled by hole measures such because the sanctioning of Levi, the place focusing on just a few people serves solely to protect the regime accountable for the very system they uphold.
This political theatre is totally absurd. One can’t meaningfully sanction settler violence whereas sustaining full diplomatic, financial and navy assist for a regime that’s, by definition, a settler regime. The settler and the state are inseparable. To sanction one whereas legitimising the opposite isn’t accountability; it’s complicity. Hathaleen’s homicide isn’t an anomaly however the direct final result of this technique, one that’s protected, financed and excused by the identical states that declare to oppose it. Such actions don’t problem the established order; they entrench and normalise it. Breaking this cycle requires states to finish their assist for Israel’s genocidal regime of settlement and occupation altogether, via complete sanctions and actual accountability that targets the system, not simply its murderous foot troopers.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.