AL-MUARAJAT, WEST BANK — It was early on a mid-September day when a group of Israeli settlers arrived at a small Palestinian Bedouin school in the occupied West Bank. In short order, they stormed the building. Armed and emboldened, the settlers threw rocks, broke windows, and injured several students and teachers. Children scrambled for safety while their teachers tried to shield them.
When the Israeli military arrived, however, it wasn’t to intervene and stop the attack. Instead, the soldiers had come only to arrest the school’s headmaster, who had been taken to a hospital for his injuries.
In the past year, another, less-remarked-upon war against the Palestinians has intensified in the West Bank. Settler violence surged and the military has responded with increasing, and more brazen, complicity.
Instead of maintaining order in its occupation, the army acts as an enforcer for the settlers. With figures…