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On May 3, 2025, Issa Amro's home in Hebron was attacked by Israeli settlers. The Israeli soldiers present did not intervene and threatened Amro with arrest if he filed a complaint. The attack followed the broadcast of the BBC documentary The Settlers by Louis Theroux, in which Amro appears. According to the 2024 European report, less than 3% of settler violence leads to an indictment. Since 2020, no prison sentence has been handed down to a settler responsible for the death of a Palestinian civilian. The May 3 incident, settlers and soldiers burst into Issa Amro's home in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron. The scene, filmed and relayed by several international media outlets, shows settlers forcing entry and vandalizing the house. When the Israeli soldiers arrived, they did not intervene. They warned Amro that filing a complaint could lead to his arrest. Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender, founder of the organization Youth Against Settlements. He has lived in Tel Rumeida for nearly twenty years. He was recognized by the Swedish Right Livelihood Award in October 2024, then by the Franco-German Human Rights Prize in December 2024. For the latter award, Israeli soldiers refused entry to Hebron to French and German representatives. Amro accepted the prize on a road, outside a checkpoint. Why don't the soldiers intervene? The May 3 raid is not an isolated incident. Amro reported several attacks in the months that followed, including three in twelve hours. In October, Israeli soldiers forcibly entered his home and arrested a friend who was watching the property in his absence. The friend was subsequently barred from returning. A settler climbed a wall to dismantle a security camera, in the presence of a soldier. After stones were thrown at the house, the soldiers entered and arrested Amro, accusing him of having thrown the stones. Read one after another, these incidents reveal a pattern: military presence does not deviate from its function when settlers attack; it shifts against the victim when she protests or defends herself. The soldier who watches a settler dismantle a camera does not make an individual choice: he follows a chain of command that does not require him to intervene. This is precisely what the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion issued in July 2024 documents: the coexistence, on the same territory, of a civil-law regime for the settlers and a military-law regime for the Palestinians produces a structural asymmetry in the application of the law. The army contradicts itself. By late October, friends and neighbors who came to Amro's house were ordered to leave: the area around his house had just been declared a “closed military zone.” The maps shown to Amro reveal that his residence is now an island in the middle of a military zone. Asked for comment, the Israeli army replied that Amro “is allowed to receive people within the framework of the law.” The statement does not stand up to the facts. If Amro is allowed to receive people, how to explain the arrest of a friend who came to guard the house and his later ban from returning? How to explain the soldiers’ expulsion of friends and neighbors who came to visit him? How to explain that his house was cartographically isolated in the heart of a closed military zone? The army's response is not a denial; it is a legal formula: “within the framework of the law.” Yet the applicable legal framework is not Israeli civil law; it is military law—and it is the same framework that allows declaring a zone closed from one day to the next. The contradiction is therefore not a contradiction: it silently says that the law governing Amro's house authorizes everything he denounces. What triggered the escalation: a BBC documentary. Amro appeared in The Settlers, a BBC documentary produced by the BBC and presented by Louis Theroux. The film investigates the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and their impact on Palestinians. It was broadcast in May. “They started to hate me more after my appearance in the BBC documentary with Louis Theroux. They hated me a lot more since,” Amro said. Theroux himself was harassed by Israeli soldiers during filming in Hebron, who tried to drive him out of the area. In the same film, Daniella Weiss, a historic figure of the settlers’ movement, lays out the doctrine plainly: “You bring Jewish families to the occupied West Bank, you live there a Jewish life, and that will bring light to the place of darkness. This is how the State of Israel was established, and this is what we want to do in Gaza.” The legal framework: acknowledged illegality, organized impunity All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law. According to several sources, Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies—the legal basis for the illegality cited by international bodies. The United Nations General Assembly last year called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli presence in Palestinian territory is “illegal.” In July 2024, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion concluding that Israeli occupation, settlements, and annexation of Palestinian territories are contrary to international law. According to several sources, Article 8 of the 1998 Rome Statute, founding the International Criminal Court, defines as a war crime the transfer by an occupying power of part of its civilian population into the occupied territory. On the ground, the figures document what Amro calls legal apartheid: “The settlers live under Israeli civil law; I live under military law. This is apartheid.” The conviction rate in Israeli military courts approaches 100%. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused Israel of practicing apartheid in the occupied territory. Impunity, in numbers The European External Action Service’s report on Israeli settlements for January–December 2024 documents 991 incidents of settler violence by Israelis against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Thirteen Palestinians were killed, 538 injured, 1,229 displaced. In the same year, 1,058 Palestinian structures were demolished or seized, displacing 1,739 people. Twenty-four thousand three hundred housing units were approved in the settlements, 26 new outposts established, more than 1,000 hectares of Palestinian land seized for expansion. Less than 3% of investigations into settler violence led to an indictment. Since October 7, Amro has reported more than 1,400 settler attacks on Palestinian communities. Several Palestinians have been injured or killed. The Israeli government continues to allocate funds to illegal outposts, despite their illegality under international and Israeli law. Since the end of 2020, Israeli courts have not handed down any new prison sentences against settlers found responsible for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. The Trump factor, claimed by the settlers themselves According to Amro, the settlers who attacked him the day before told him that Donald Trump supported them. They felt “bolstered by the Trump administration’s blind support.” The wording matters: it is the settlers themselves who invoke this support, not commentators. Daniella Weiss, in the documentary, states that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “happy” with the expansion of the settlements. Netanyahu opposed Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Targeting an international figure: a signal The international status of Amro is not merely biographical. A Right Livelihood Award laureate in October 2024, a Franco-German Human Rights Prize recipient in December 2024, supported in 2017 by Senator Bernie Sanders and 32 members of the US Congress who had written to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to urge Israeli authorities to reconsider the charges against him, he belongs to a small circle of human rights defenders whom the international community has explicitly backed. In theory, this status should protect him. In practice, the opposite seems to occur. The Franco-German prize ceremony itself was prevented from entering Hebron by the Israeli army, which turned French and German diplomats away at a checkpoint: Amro received his prize on the road. A few months later, his house was attacked and he was threatened with arrest if he filed a complaint. The message sent is not subtle. It says that international distinctions do not create on-the-ground protection zones, and that a activist made visible by a BBC documentary or a European prize does not become untouchable—in fact, his visibility makes him a test target. When a Right Livelihood Award laureate can be assaulted at home in front of the army with no consequences, the threshold of impunity shifts for everyone else. Hebron, a geography of disproportion Hebron is one of the most contested areas in the West Bank. About 800 Israeli settlers live there under heavy military protection in the midst of more than 200,000 Palestinian residents. The army and settlers occupy 20% of the city, designated as Zone H2. Shuhada Street, the main artery, remains largely off limits to Palestinians. Youth Against Settlements’ flagship Open Shuhada Street campaign commemorates the 1994 Ibrahim Mosque massacre, in which a Jewish extremist killed 29 people and wounded 125. This event marked Amro’s commitment. In the broader context of an occupied municipal election, Hebron concentrates tensions in the West Bank: permanent military presence, movement restrictions, and documented settler violence by international organizations. Precedents: Amro is not the first In March, Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning No Other Land, was attacked by armed and masked Israeli settlers at his home in Susya, a village in the West Bank. They vandalized his house and vehicle and wounded him. While he was receiving care in an ambulance, Israeli soldiers blindfolded him and arrested him. The sequence is almost identical to what Amro experienced: assault by settlers, not intervention to protect the victim but to arrest him. The targeting of an Oscar-winning filmmaker in March, then of a Right Livelihood Award laureate in May, is not statistical chance. The blind spot: what sources document and what no one picks up. The European External Action Service report establishes two facts that, side by side, tell a mechanism. On one hand, 991 incidents of violence in 2024. On the other, less than 3% of inquiries resulting in an indictment. This rate is not a malfunction: it is the statistic of a system that operates as designed. When Amro says that violence is committed “with impunity and without any accountability,” he is not editorializing. He is describing what European figures confirm. Amro has been detained twenty times in 2012 without any charges brought. He is currently facing 18 charges before an Israeli military court. In September 2017, he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority for criticizing on Facebook the arrest of a journalist. Amnesty International asked the Palestinian Authority in March 2019 to drop all prosecutions against him. He is harassed by the two authorities that have control over his life. What the sources do not say None of the sources consulted specify the identity of the settler who led the May 3 attack, nor whether any investigation was opened by Israeli authorities. No public response from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office regarding the settlers’ claim that the Trump administration emboldened them. The soldiers present during the raid who threatened Amro with arrest if he filed a complaint were not identified or sanctioned to the knowledge of sources available at the time of writing. The calendar Between October 7, 2023 and November 13, 2025, Israeli security forces and settlers have killed at least 1,017 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Among the victims: 221 children. In October 2025, more than 260 settler attacks were recorded by the UN, the highest monthly total since 2006. The figures speak for themselves. The responsibilities, however, are not established by the courts: less than 3% of investigations lead to an indictment. “This is a story that must be told,” Amro said about his participation in the documentary. The sentence is sober. The price he pays to tell it is not. Sources
15 July, 2026
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