According to Voices for Justice in Palestine:
Settlers are religious zealots within Israel or foreign immigrants from places like the United States and Europe who are recruited to live in the illegal settlements as part of Israel’s plan to settle the land of Palestine. Most are motivated by messianic beliefs. All are given a generous package of state-financed inducements to move into settlement homes. The settlement homes are built on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem. Their presence is often accompanied by violence against Palestinians and protection by the Israeli military. Settlements or “colonies” are heavily fortified, connected by Jewish-only roads, and are designed to permanently fragment Palestinian communities. Their steady expansion is part of a broader system of colonization “to make Palestine Jewish.” Settlement expansion creates “facts on the ground” that prevent the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state. Settlements are illegal under international law.
Despite decades of international condemnation and numerous UN resolutions, Israelis have been committing crimes against Palestinians under the pretext of defending Settlements or in the process of expanding Settlements in the West Bank. Settlers (either on their own, or overseen and protected by the IDF) have assaulted, robbed, disappeared, and murdered Palestinian on a regular basis. These crimes are part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing that has slowly resulted in the relentless de facto annexation of Palestinian land.
One of the methods for the theft of Palestinian land is as follows: An illegal Settler outpost is created and protected through official and unofficial violence (under the guise of protecting individuals). The outpost eventually gains some legitimacy (only under Israeli law) as an established settlement, with no clearly defined borders. Further violence is justified under the pretext of security for the settlement. That “legitimacy” is then used to press claims on Palestinian land in the West Bank, with many negative consequences for neighbouring Palestinian communities.
The settlements also become launching sites for crimes against nearby Palestinian communities and ultimately result in the often violent expansion of settler territory, with cover provided by the IDF.
Canada has repeatedly condemned the illegal settlements and the actions of settlers. They have even sanctioned some individual bad actors. Neither action has resulted in any meaningful decrease in the crimes and activities described here.
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