Former Israeli Generals Sound Alarm about Mass Expulsions, ‘Jewish Terrorism’

By Argiris Malapanis

“Short of ethnic cleansing or ‘mass transfer,’ as in 1948, there is no way for Israel to get rid of the Palestinians,” said Edward Said, a Palestinian and American academic, literary critic, and leader of the Palestinian national movement.

Said (1935 – 2003) was referring to the 1948 war — during which Israel was founded as a colonial settler state through harrowing violence, mass expulsions of more than 700,000 Palestinians, and the expropriation of their land. He made this statement in a 1999 article on The One-State Solution.

But ethnic cleansing is precisely what right-wing Israeli settlers, with the backing of the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces (IDF), are well on their way toward accomplishing in the West Bank — home to some 3 million Palestinians and half a million Zionist settlers.

Warnings about this dire situation facing Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, particularly the West Bank, have multiplied in recent weeks.

NEWS ANALYSIS

“What is at stake today is not a ‘diplomatic solution,’ but the very existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea,” wrote Amira Hass in a column in the September 1, 2026, Israeli daily Haaretz. “The Israeli forces striving to ‘erase’ them recognize no limits or restraints. Their supporters are too numerous for us to rely solely on the steadfastness and resilience of a people that has already endured expulsion plans carried out by Israel….

“Let me reiterate: The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger.”

Confirmation of such an impending disaster came recently from an unlikely source: retired IDF generals and former officers of Mossad, Israel’s main spy agency.

“Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven spent his life fighting for Israel,” began an article in the August 31, 2026, New York Times. “He survived the Arab Israeli war of 1973, when his platoon was nearly wiped out, then went on to command a division in the West Bank and lead Israel’s ground forces in the 2006 war against Hezbollah.

“But in recent months, he has returned to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, touring the territory with retired generals and former Israeli officials like himself. He has walked through the remains of a Palestinian school looted by Israeli settlers, and listened to Palestinian shepherds and farmers describe being tortured by settlers who seize their livestock and land.”

Ben-Reuven and other retired Israeli officials went to the West Bank on a recent tour organized by Yaakov Or, himself a retired general who spent many of his active-duty days in the West Bank. Since Or began organizing the tours a little over a year ago, more than 250 people — former military brass, high-ranking spies, and other prominent Israelis — have joined.

“This, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to Israel,” Ben-Reuven told the Times. “This is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.”

Other former Israeli officials on the same tour in the West Bank shared his assessment.

‘This is ethnic cleansing’

“This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply,” Ephraim Sneh, a retired brigadier general and former minister of health, said about the Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, compared the settlers’ escalating attacks on Palestinians to what Jews endured in the Holocaust — not in the scale of the violence, he told the Times, but in the effort to erase the Palestinian presence from much of the West Bank.

“Once a society behaves this way,” Agmon remarked, “that society is doomed.”

These words are reminiscent of the assessment by Marxist scholar Isaac Deutscher, who was himself a Jew. In a 1967 interview with the London-based magazine New Left Review, in the aftermath of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War that year against its Arab neighbors, Deutscher said:

“Paradoxically and grotesquely, the Israelis appear now in the role of the Prussians of the Middle East. They have now won three wars against their Arab neighbors. Just so did the Prussians a century ago defeat all their neighbors within a few years, the Danes, the Austrians, and the French. The succession of victories bred in them an absolute confidence in their own efficiency, a blind reliance on the force of their arms, chauvinistic arrogance, and contempt for other peoples. I fear that a similar degeneration — for degeneration it is — may be taking place in the political character of Israel….

“The Israelis have, in their overwhelming majority, accepted the ‘doctrine’ behind their government’s policy, the ‘doctrine’ that holds that Israel’s security lies in periodic warfare which every few years must reduce the Arab states to impotence.”

Indeed, since the gruesome October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, when about 1200 Israelis were killed, most of them civilians, Israel has been consumed by war, with no end in sight.

First, it was its genocidal war in Gaza, turning the territory into rubble, killing at least 75,000, and wounding some 175,000 Palestinians — the vast majority civilians. The war formally ended with the January 2025 ceasefire, but in reality it has continued to simmer. The IDF now occupies 70% of the small territory, having pushed 2 million Gazans into a tiny, uninhabitable wasteland. (Indicating where this may be headed, Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced a plan on September 4 to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. He called for the next government to form a ministry in charge of emigration to carry out his plan of mass expulsion within seven years.)

Then came Israel’s two invasions of Lebanon and fighting against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, including the ongoing occupation of much of that country’s south by IDF troops. These military attacks have resulted in Lebanese suffering over 8,000 deaths, more than 28,000 injuries, and repeated displacements for more than 1 million. (In a sign that there is no end to this conflict in the near future, on September 7 the Israeli military launched a new wave of deadly strikes in southern Lebanon, as part of an intensifying bombardment in recent days. This has fueled fears that Israel could push deeper into Lebanese territory as it entrenches control of land it has seized.)

Two more wars followed against Iran, including the most recent US-Israeli assault launched on February 28, 2026.

In addition, after the December 2024 collapse of the Assad dictatorship, Israel voided its 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria and expanded its military control into a buffer zone and strategic locations in the southern part of the country, which it continues to hold. Israeli forces have also carried out repeated attacks on military installations and other targets in Syria since then.

“But in the shadows of those conflicts, a quieter front has emerged in the West Bank,” reported the August 31 New York Times. “Armed Israeli settlers, emboldened by the most right-wing government in the nation’s history, raid and torch Palestinian homes, mosques and villages with seeming impunity, openly trying to drive them out of the territory.

“Israel’s top military commander in the West Bank has warned that the violence risked setting the territory ablaze. Settlers have waged thousands of attacks in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, injuring thousands of Palestinians, according to the United Nations. More than 3200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks this year alone — double the rate of last year.

“As the pace of violence climbs, the UN says, the number of Palestinians injured in settler attacks has risen from an average of one every three days in 2020 to more than three per day in 2026.” This represents a nine-fold increase.

Cracks within Israeli ruling class

The retired generals condemning this violence are part of a small but expanding layer of influential Israelis.

Their actions indicate there are some divisions within the Israeli ruling class about the drive to steal more and more land from Palestinians, force as many of them as possible out of the West Bank, and eventually annex the occupied territory to Israel.

“More than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding that the government stop the attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank,” the Times reported. “The signatories included two former prime ministers, more than three dozen retired Army and Air Force generals, the former heads of the nation’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, as well as rabbis, a Nobel laureate and one of Israel’s most revered novelists.

“The retired officials come from across the political landscape, including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own party, and many were considered security hawks.

“In their letter, they called for an end to ‘Jewish terrorism’ and the ‘ethnic cleansing’ underway in the West Bank. And they accused Mr. Netanyahu’s government not just of being negligent in failing to stop it, but of pursuing ‘a deliberate government policy in which the entire security establishment — including the military, Shin Bet and the police — is knowingly complicit.’”

Shin Bet is Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence service.

“The signatories cited tens of millions of dollars in government spending on illegal Israeli outposts and farms, and demanded a full accounting of all public money spent on roads, water, electricity, vehicles and weapons to support them,” the Times continued.

“They also accused the military of being complicit in the violence, saying soldiers stand by and watch as Palestinians are attacked, or sometimes even join settlers to assault Palestinian villages together.”

It is important to note that many of these former Israeli officials were themselves responsible for extreme violence against Palestinians while on active duty. They ordered killings of individuals, deadly airstrikes, raids, and other attacks, including in the West Bank.

They now say that, unlike when they were in charge, “the violence is unchecked, indiscriminate and targets innocent civilians, with the intent of clearing large stretches of the West Bank so that Israelis can take it for themselves and stamp out any prospect of a Palestinian state,” according to the Times.

The settler attacks are unfolding as the IDF is acting much more aggressively in the West Bank.

Since the October 7 attacks almost three years ago, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, the vast majority of them at the hands of Israeli forces. That is roughly the same number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank in the previous 17 years, between 2005 and 2022, according to the United Nations. Since 2023, 67 Israelis there have been killed by Palestinians.

As the violence mounts — and killings, arsons, and lootings go unpunished — some who once defended the occupation are sounding the alarm.

“If I had to, I could make a legal defense of what the Israel Defense Forces have done in Gaza,” said Gal Levertov, the former head of the international division at Israel’s ministry of justice. Levertov represented Israel before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

“But what is happening today in the West Bank?” he added. “It’s indefensible.”

Some of the retired officials go as far as describing the settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as reminiscent of Nazism — a very contentious statement in Israel, where many Jews took refuge after the Holocaust.

Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense minister under Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the actions and ideology of ultra-rightist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II Germany.

“What is Jewish supremacy?” Ya’alon recently said on Ynet, an Israeli news site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, Mein Kampf in reverse. The master race is us.”

Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was the 1925 autobiographical and political manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler.

Israeli gov’t fans flames, as Washington goes along

The Trump administration has recently taken note of the violence. US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the settlers involved in these attacks “terrorists.” But Washington is treating these actions as an anomaly rather than Israeli policy, and has made no attempt to put any brakes on settlement expansion, creeping annexation, military raids, demolitions of Palestinian homes, or settler attacks — all of which have reached record numbers under Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, the actions of the Netanyahu cabinet embolden the right-wing settlers and fan the flames of violence in the West Bank.

“Two new Israeli settlements were inaugurated on Monday [August 31, 2026] deep inside enclaves between areas under Palestinian control in the West Bank, a day after… Netanyahu boasted that his current government founded a record number of settlements and illegal outposts,” reported Haaretz on September 1.

Israeli government ministers — including the ultra-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has oversight power over administration and settlements in the West Bank — were featured in the opening ceremonies.

“The first settlement, Noa, is located in an enclave surrounded on three sides by Area A, which is under the Palestinian Authority’s full civil and security control, in the northern West Bank,” Haaretz continued.

“The second settlement, Maqada, is located in Area C, under Israeli control, in the heart of a developed Palestinian area west of Hebron.”

Noa and Maqada are two of the 104 settlements approved by the Israeli cabinet during the current government’s term.

Settler leader Yossi Dagan hailed the groundbreaking at Noa as an “absolute victory.”

“A Haaretz investigation from June found that the new settlements, established deep inside Palestinian territory, are intended to prevent territorial contiguity and further fragment areas under Palestinian Authority control,” the Israeli daily explained.

“What Is E1? The West Bank Area Behind Israel’s Most Explosive Settlement Plan,” was the headline of another Haaretz article published on August 30.

“E1 sits between Jerusalem and the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem,” Haaretz explained. “Israeli control would cut East Jerusalem — which Palestinians claim as the capital for their future state — off from the West Bank, and place a settlement bloc in the center of a major Palestinian metropolitan area.”

E1 (short for “East 1”) is a 12-square-kilometer (4.6-square-mile) tract of land in the West Bank, a strategic corridor located immediately east of Jerusalem. Building an Israeli settlement there would cut off the northern West Bank from the territory’s south.

Building plans for E1 have been delayed by successive Israeli governments since the 1990s due to international outcry. Now, the Netanyahu government is moving ahead with construction, disregarding Palestinian and international protests.

That Israel is moving forward with the plan regardless of years of international uproar “shows you that Israel doesn’t care” about the consequences, Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli non-governmental organization Ir Amim, told Haaretz.

The siege of Qusra

Then there is the siege of Qusra.

Beginning on August 9, dozens of Israeli settlers surrounded Palestinian homes on a hilltop (Mount Ras al-Ain) in the West Bank village of Qusra, southeast of the city Nablus, and about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Jerusalem. Settlers severed water, electricity, and power lines, pitched tents, and blocked roads to trap families inside and force them off their land. Masked settlers repeatedly attacked the village with stones, set fire to nearby fields, and vandalized or looted properties. Some of the targeted homes belong to Palestinian American families.

The Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone and installed new metal gates and roadblocks around the besieged homes, which residents and human rights groups say effectively institutionalized the siege. Humanitarian convoys and activists attempting to deliver food, medicine, and water to the trapped families have been repeatedly blocked or turned away by military forces.

The violence and siege in Qusra have drawn international criticism. Netanyahu shed crocodile tears by condemning the settler actions. But local residents report that soldiers on the ground have failed to stop the settlers. The month-long siege is ongoing.

These are some of the many examples that show how the Israeli government is aiding and abetting settler violence and creeping annexation in the West Bank.

Even Israel’s High Court of Justice has reacted against government complicity in this drive toward “erasure.” On September 6, the court ordered Israeli authorities to arrange the return of three Palestinian petitioners and their families to their homes in the West Bank village of Jalud, south of Nablus.

These Palestinians had been driven out after months of incursions by Israeli settlers, threats, stone-throwing, roadblocks, and damage to their property and local infrastructure. The families presented evidence showing that attackers cut their water line, uprooted trees, grazed livestock on their land, set fire to a family vehicle, and blocked the road to their homes with large rocks.

“The picture that emerges is very grim,” the court said, unconvinced by government claims that the military and police had tried to protect the families. Video evidence showed soldiers playing soccer with the Israeli intruders in the courtyard of one Palestinian home during “enforcement” operations.

‘No point in warning a pyromaniac government about a fire’

“Ahead of the election, and given that the Americans are restricting Israel’s moves on the Iranian front, in Gaza and in Lebanon,” said Haaretz’s lead editorial on September 1, “Netanyahu’s government has been left with no other arena than the West Bank, which it can set on fire.”

Legislative elections for the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, are scheduled for October 27, 2026.

The editorial was titled, “There’s No Point Warning Israel’s Pyromaniac Government About the West Bank Blaze.”

In a surprise visit to the Israeli military’s central command headquarters at the end of August, Netanyahu asked to see an IDF plan “for a scenario in which rifles are turned against them,” the Haaretz editors said. This “sounded more like a wish, aimed at setting fire to the area in an attempt to push the Palestinians into turning their guns around, and in the hope of turning around unfavorable opinion polls.”

The Haaretz editorial also noted that “Jewish terrorists… have lost all fear and restraint, partly due to knowing they have the backing of the government and the protection of the IDF.”

Palestinians describe daily struggles against settlers

One byproduct of the tours organized by Or in the West Bank is the spotlight they have put on the plight of Palestinians under attack by settlers. The media attention is allowing these farmers and workers to speak to the world in their own words.

In the village of Burin, Bashar Eid, a Palestinian farmer, took the recent Israeli visitors to his roof, limping behind them with a cane, the result of a settler attack that left him permanently impaired, he told the Times.

Eid described the constant attacks from settler outposts, which were visible from the roof, positioned along the hillsides surrounding his house. The settlers enter the village every day, he said.

One recent morning, he added, he spotted a young settler boy walking on his land. When he asked him what he was doing, the boy told him to shut up, or he and his buddies would break his other leg.

“A kid told me that,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Eid can no longer farm his land, he added, because settlers attack him when he tries. His days have been reduced to sitting on his roof, watching for settler incursions.

“I don’t know what to do,” he explained. “They want to take my house.”

“It is embarrassing to even ask, but why don’t the Palestinians defend themselves?” a former chief state attorney asked Eid, according to the Times.

“I’m afraid if I defend myself, it will be even worse for us,” Eid responded.

There is plenty of evidence that any retaliation against the settlers would be deemed “terrorism,” prompting even more severe crackdowns, including by the Israeli military.

On the last stop of the tour reported by the Times, in a barren area in the northern Jordan Valley, a young Palestinian farmer stood before the Israeli visitors and pointed.

In front of him, a few hundred feet away, stood a long line of Israeli flags, planted one after another, as if lining a parade route. Behind him, a settler outpost had been scraped into the side of a hill, the Israeli flag flying over it.

Nearby, settlers had erected a fence, turning his farm into a holding pen.

“Six months ago, this was our land,” he said. “Now, it’s like a jail.”

His family’s previous normal life —  farming and grazing their sheep — ended abruptly with the arrival in January of the first settlers, who stationed themselves on the hillside, he said. Now, the farmer and his family can no longer use their farmland or harvest their crops.

The young farmer said he is forbidden from accessing his land, and every time he tried, settlers called the police. He had already been arrested four times, he added, though he was always released.

But whenever he called the police to report harassment, or vandalism of his water tanks, “they never answer,” he explained.

The Palestinian farmer said he has decided to sell his sheep, rather than lose them to settlers or starvation because he could no longer go out and graze them.

“They should see this reality, and not accept it,” the farmer said, referring to the visiting generals and the broader Israeli public.

If you appreciate this article, share it with friends and subscribe to World-Outlook (for free) by clicking on the link below.

Type your email in the box below and click on “SUBSCRIBE.” You will receive a notification in your in-box on which you will have to click to confirm your subscription.