Israeli Press
Zamir warned Netanyahu that settler crime could ignite the West Bank
Image credit: Benjamin Netanyahu — Wikimedia Commons · License
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Israel's chief of staff went to the prime minister eight days ago to tell him the occupied West Bank could slip out of control, and the reason he gave was Jewish nationalist crime.
That account comes from the commentator Nadav Eyal, whose column ran in Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday and appeared the same morning on the paper's news site. Eyal reports the warning as a first publication.
Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir delivered it to Benjamin Netanyahu personally, Eyal writes, and the Shin Bet shares the concern: its director David Zini has stepped up the work of the internal security service's Jewish Department, the unit that handles Israeli settler violence.
The meeting, and what happened after it#
Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz then summoned Zamir and the Central Command chief, Major General Avi Bluth, to an urgent discussion at general staff headquarters. The officers presented a full picture: trends in Palestinian attacks alongside the rise in violence by Israeli settlers.
What followed is the part of the column that reads as an accusation. According to Eyal, the prime minister's office ran a media campaign afterwards depicting Zamir and Bluth as unprepared officers who had wanted to talk about Jewish violence while Netanyahu wanted to talk about Palestinian attacks.
Eyal presents that campaign as spin at the expense of the two commanders, and his point is that the briefing the army gave was the one the army had been asking to give.
The chief of staff warned the prime minister that Judea and Samaria could burn.
Nadav Eyal, Yedioth Ahronoth, 28 August 2026
The second Israeli account in a week#
This is now the second time this month that the Hebrew press has put the same finding in front of Israeli readers. Ynet reported on 23 August that senior officers describe the West Bank as exiting control and name settler violence, not Palestinian attacks, as the cause, and on 24 August the same site published an investigation describing the village blockade as a method rather than a series of incidents.
For Palestinian readers the significance is narrow and precise. What Palestinian villagers, Yesh Din and Amnesty International have documented for years is now being reported inside Israel by the army's own chain of command, in writing, to the prime minister — and it has still not produced a change in policy.
Zamir's warning is dated to the week before an Israeli election campaign in which both governing parties are competing for settlement votes. Nothing in Eyal's account suggests the political echelon intends to act on it before 27 October.
The instrument that did move this week moved the other way. On Friday, hours after the column appeared, the Israeli air force carried out its first strike in the West Bank in ten months, killing three Palestinians in Jenin.
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