The violent scenes playing out in the West Bank over the past few days are painfully familiar. Settlers setting fire to homes and places of worship, Palestinian villages coming under vicious attacks, families forced to leave their homes at gunpoint with nothing but what they can carry, and the Israeli army carrying out lethal raids.

This latest episode of violence is framed as a consequence of a deadly confrontation in the village of Tal in the northern West Bank, where Israeli settlers who attacked the community were confronted by Palestinian men. Two settlers died.

In its aftermath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase military operations in the West Bank to target “terrorist hotbeds” while Defence Minister Israel Katz said the expansion of Israeli outposts and settlements in the West Bank is now a strategic and important aspect of Israeli security.

Listening to Israeli officials, one may think Israeli military operations and settlements in the West Bank are a reaction. But they are not. They are a strategy – a strategy of colonisation.

The settler-soldier sequence

For years, the presence of the Israeli military in the West Bank was justified by the presence of Israeli settlers. Perhaps this may have held some truth in the past, but within the past five years, the distinction between a soldier and an average Israeli settler has diminished to the fact that one wears a uniform and has a chain of command while the other dresses in........

© Al Jazeera