Shaul Arieli on Rising Jewish Extremist Violence in 2025

With us now is Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Dr. Shaul Arieli, head of the Tamrur research group, Politography, which focuses on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Hello, good evening.

Hello.

Let’s start with the data you constantly collect at the Tamrur group. How many Jewish terror incidents have we had since the beginning of the year until now? Is this a significant increase compared with previous years?

Since the start of the year, if we’re talking about casualties, we have about eight Palestinian fatalities and more than 600 injured across all the incidents we’ve had this year.

This year reached close to 1,500 incidents, which is a significant jump from fewer than 900 that occurred last year.

And are we seeing a markedly larger increase in recent months compared with earlier in 2025?

Yes, absolutely. When we look at the monthly data, there is without doubt a significant jump both in October and in this month as well.

And it seems to me that what we keep seeing in the field and in the media points to this phenomenon.

So there are specific reasons you can point to that explain this rise over the year as a whole, but especially in recent weeks, when we are seeing almost daily incidents of Jewish terrorism.

Right, look, it's very difficult, because we're talking about a trend that has intensified in recent years.

But without doubt, President Trump's very clear stance that ruled out annexation and removed it from the agenda caused considerable disappointment among the settlers, especially the extremists.

But the objectives recently defined by ministers in the Israeli government and by the Yesha Council are less about strengthening existing settlements and more about establishing 'showcase' farms in areas, I quote, that need to be taken from the Palestinians so that in the future they can be annexed without Palestinian presence.

And these are essentially ongoing processes of violence, and against the background of what I said about Trump, I think this will intensify in the coming weeks and months.

And we really see this violence concentrated in certain areas, in areas where more illegal outposts are being established?

Absolutely. At the Amror group we aggregate all kinds of data, such as the demolition of Palestinian homes, the establishment of grazing farms, and the declaration of state lands.

And ultimately you see that these things are concentrated within the jurisdiction of three or four regional councils.

Leading this, of course, is Mateh Binyamin, which has the most outposts and farms.

The same in Samaria, in the Jordan Valley Regional Council, and of course also in southern Mount Hebron.

Yes. And Dr. Arieli, Chief of Staff Zamir, commented today on the events in which, yesterday, masked Israelis attacked Palestinians and IDF soldiers.

He said it is a criminal minority that tarnishes the law-abiding public.

But the picture you describe here is a phenomenon that is already slowly beginning to move out of the margins.

First of all, hundreds of rioters are involved in this phenomenon.

This is not, you know, about three or four who came out of the camp,

Rather, this involves systematically hundreds of rioters moving from area to area.

Now, Chief of Staff Zamir has a role, and he also has obligations under international law.

I would like to remind you that we essentially have two fundamental principles of the international law of occupation.

The first principle is temporariness: not to take irreversible measures so as not to fix the occupation as de facto and de jure annexation.

And the second principle we are dealing with is the principle of maintaining law and order for the benefit of the protected residents.

This applies to the Palestinian residents who are located within the occupied territory.

These provisions are stated very explicitly in the Hague Regulations of 1907.

If I may quote it, the occupying power in this case, Israel, must take all measures in its power to ensure public order.

That is the duty of the Chief of Staff, that is the duty of the Central Command commander, and that is the duty of District Commander Shai.

So why do we see a relatively small number of arrests compared with the number of incidents we have been seeing recently?

This is a question that really needs to be directed both to the chain of command, to the area commander in Bashar, to District Commander Shai, and even north of that, as I told the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense.

It's not just that we have no arrests and no indictments are being filed.

We see dozens of filmed incidents — I'm not saying anything new here — where we see IDF soldiers standing by and not acting to ensure law and order,

not to mention the Israel Police, which is completely absent from all these incidents.

And so those hundreds of rioters feel completely free to do what they do, since there is no threat to them, no threat, no sanctions or any punishment.