As a general rule, I support Israel in its conflicts with adversaries like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. While I am no great fan of either the present Israeli government or the ideology of Zionism, Israel upholds liberal democratic values to a far greater extent than any of its enemies, and their victory would be a terrible catastrophe. Thus, I've even gone so far as to argue that it is a mistake for the Israelis to make hostage exchange deals with groups like Hamas, because doing so encourages more more terrorism.

But it is also important to remember that not all Israeli actions are just, and that Palestinian Arabs also have human rights that must be respected. This is one of those times where these points must be emphasized. Over the last few years, Israeli settlers on the West Bank have repeatedly attacked Palestinians living there, seeking to force them off their land. These actions are deeply unjust, amounting to ethnic cleansing and gross violations of private property rights. They also highlight broader dangers of ethno-nationalist claims to exclusive control over land.

The Times of Israel (a center-right Israeli publication) has a helpful overview of the recent settler violence:

Mahmoud Tubasi has not lived in his home in the village of Jalud, south of Nablus, since late July, after fleeing following weeks of settler violence…

Tubasi built the house some seven years ago on land owned by his family on the outskirts of Jalud. The property sits in Area B, where, under the Oslo Accords, Israel maintains security control while the Palestinian Authority is responsible for civilian affairs….

For nearly seven years, he and his family, including his two children and grandchildren, lived there peacefully, he said. But in April, some four months ago, settlers began targeting the home, first setting fire to it and then laying siege to Tubasi and his family.

On July 22, after his pleas for help went unanswered, the family fled. Watching from afar, Tubasi has since seen settlers moving around his home….

In recent years, settler extremists in the West Bank have stepped up campaigns of harassment and violence aimed at driving Palestinians from their homes, sometimes displacing whole communities….

Over the three years from January 2023 through April 2026, some 5,900 people in the West Bank were displaced from their homes due to settler violence, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in early July.

The figure includes mostly Bedouins (and some Palestinian farmers) living in what the UN defines as "communities." According to the UN, 45 such communities were completely displaced and another 72 were partially displaced.

In some cases, settlers subsequently established illegal outposts on land where the displaced communities had lived.

The UN is far from an unbiased source, when it comes to Israel. But even if the true number of people expelled from their homes is "only" a half or a third of the one they give, it's still awful.

I rarely agree with Mike Huckabee, an extreme social conservative and the Trump Administration's ambassador to Israel. But he is right to call these violent settlers "terrorists" and demand the Israeli government put a stop to their activities. As conservative (and generally pro-Israel) New York Times columnist Bet Stephens points out, the right-wing Israeli coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has largely turned a blind eye to these actions because his rule is dependent on the support of far-right parties that back the violent settlers.

The settlers' actions are reprehensible for multiple reasons. Most obviously, they seek to expel Palestinian Arabs from their land simply based on their ethnic background. Such ethnic cleansing is obviously unjust. In addition, the seizure of homes, farms, and other property is a blatant violation of private property rights. Private property is both an important human right in itself, and a vital element of liberty and autonomy more generally. Palestinians are no less entitled to these rights than any other group.

The settlers claim they are justified in their actions because Jews are the true, exclusive owners and sovereigns of the area and therefore have the right to exclude and expel members of other groups. This kind of ethno-nationalist claim to exclusive territorial rights is far from unique to Israeli settler extremists. All sorts of nationalist movements make similar claims - including, of course, many Arab and Palestinian nationalists.

But the ubiquity of such claims cannot justify them. In my book Free to Move, and other writings, I have argued that racial and ethnic claims to exclusive territorial rights are inherently unjust for much the same reasons as racial and ethnic discrimination is unjust in other contexts: race and ethnicity are morally arbitrary characteristics that should not determine what rights people have, including where they are allowed to live and work.

In addition, historical claims that one group has a right to exclusive rule of some territory founder on the reality that almost all inhabited territories have a history of multiple ethnic and racial groups living there. Thus, none can claim history proves they are the exclusive owners. This is clearly true of Israel and the West Bank. Jews, of course, have lived there for thousands of years. But the same is true of Arabs and other groups.

Most people are unwilling to go as far as I do in rejecting ethnic territorial claims. But even those who accept such historical arguments to a limited degree, should still recognize it is unjust to engage in ethnic cleansing of people who have lived in an area for decades or centuries. Their historical claim to live there is as good as anyone else's.

I readily recognize that my arguments imply that Jews also should not be barred from living in the West Bank, as many Palestinian nationalists would like them to be. They should indeed be allowed to live there, if they choose. But they should not have the right to take Palestinians' land and other private property by force.

One can also defend the violent settlers on the grounds that their actions aren't as bad as those of Palestinian terrorists, most notably Hamas. It is indeed true that - so far, at least - the Israeli settlers haven't murdered, raped, or tortured civilians on anything like the same scale as Hamas has, especially during the horrific October 7 attack.

But that in no way justifies the Israeli settler violence, most of which is directed against innocent civilians, whose only wrong is that they are Arabs living on land the settlers want to take for themselves. "Not as bad as Hamas" cannot be the standard of judgment here. You can be less bad than Hamas, but still a terrorist criminal.

In 2020, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down a government policy intended to expropriate Palestinian property for transfer to Israeli Jews (citing some of my own writings on takings and property rights, in the process). Some of what I wrote then is applicable to the current situation, as well:

Jews, including my own ancestors, have a long history of being victimized by unjust property expropriations at the hands of both European and Arab Muslim governments (as well as even more severe forms of persecution). Israel should not be in the business of perpetrating similar injustices of its own against other groups. The fact that this case was not on the same scale as many of the expropriations perpetrated against Jews is noteworthy, but still no excuse.

At the same time, it is also worth noting that Israel has an independent judiciary that curbs some of its government's unjust policies, as it has in this case. The same can't be said for most of Israel's adversaries.

Sadly, the present Israeli government hasn't shown the same commitment to liberal values as the Israeli Supreme Court did in 2020. Indeed, among its other sins, that government has been trying to undermine judicial review, in part for the purpose of establishing a kind of "tyranny of the majority." Israel must do better, and the US and other Western states should apply pressure to that effect, even as we also keep in mind that there is still a major moral gap between the Israelis and their adversaries.

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