The “Gray Arm” of Israeli Annexation, by Amos Brison – 25 September 2026

From +972 Magazine

A settler-led wing of the army is driving Palestinian displacement on the state’s behalf. But as Yagil Levy explains, this devil’s bargain comes not without costs.

At the end of 2022, Yagil Levy, a professor of political sociology and public policy and head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at the Open University of Israel, identified a shift taking place within the Israeli military. “When it comes to the Palestinians, the Israeli military is in fact splintered into two armies,” he wrote in +972 Magazine. “Alongside the ‘official’ army, a ‘policing’ force has emerged in the Israeli-controlled West Bank” — one with deep social and ideological ties to the settlement movement and the hardline religious-Zionist right.

“The result is a clear army bias in favor of the settlers,” Levy continued. “It turns a blind eye to the establishment of unauthorized settlement outposts … it ignores vigilante violence against Palestinians and sometimes even partakes in it.”

Four years later, the “policing army” Levy identified has become deeply entrenched, helping to push settler violence and Palestinian displacement in the West Bank to record levels. Since the start of 2026, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has recorded over 1600 settler attacks in 275 Palestinian communities — an average of 6.7 every day, the highest rate since it began keeping records. And since October 7, settlers have erected over 150 new outposts and joined forces with the army to expel at least 76 entire Palestinian communities.

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Yagil Levy is a professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel, where he studies civil-military relations.

Amos Brison is an editor at +972, based in Berlin.

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