Amid reports that Israel is taking steps to rein in settler violence in the West Bank and has diverted troops from Lebanon to the Palestinian territory for that purpose, Euronews spoke to two Israeli analysts to understand the threat posed by ultra-nationalist settlers.
The troop redeployment from an active war front to a less critical area is happening as Israel’s military chief of staff General Eyal Zamir has warned that the army is severely short-staffed and is “going to collapse on itself”.
We also put the question of mounting pressure on the army to former Israeli ambassador to France and historian Eli Barnavi, and to Major General (res) Yaakov Amidror, a former national security advisor now distinguished fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
Army not collapsing but not enlisting ultra-Orthodox Jews
Both noted that though conscription of men and women aged 18 is compulsory in Israel, some populations are exempted, among them ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, who account for 15% of the population.
This contributes to a shortage of troops, especially when Israel is engaged on three active fronts: Lebanon, Iran and Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from tackling the issue as Haredi members of his coalition have threatened to topple the government if the exemption is revoked.
“There is no solution, you can’t force them and they have political influence. And their number is growing in Israel,” said Barnavi, referring to the fact that Haredim are the fastest-growing demographic group in Israel, with an average of 6.5 children per woman compared to 2.2 among other Jewish women in Israel.
“A few of them serve but with particular adjustments, they can’t be next to or see a woman, they can’t hear a woman sing. This is not how you build an army and this is symptomatic of a wider problem: our democratic culture is under assault,” he added.
Two ultra-Orthodox parties sit in the current Israeli government coalition.
Israel’s military chief estimates the manpower shortage at around 15,000 soldiers, including 8,000 combat troops.
Amidror explained that reducing the 36-month mandatory service to 32 months in 2015 contributed to the shortage.
The government is currently seeking to restore the service to its initial duration. Zamir’s raising the alarm over a near-collapse of the army is also due to the fact that reservists, who are called to duty in times of war, have complained that they are insufficiently compensated and are losing out financially.
Amidror downplayed any threat to the army: “(Zamir) wanted to raise attention to the issue. The army is not going to collapse. We don’t have any recruitment problem, especially in the fighting units.”
“But he is right, they should lengthen the service and compensate reservists better, and the government is working on solving this. The issue of the ultra-Orthodox is political, the government will not change the situation, it is tied to their vote.”
Pulling troops from Lebanon is ill-timed
Both experts agreed that moving troops away from Lebanon to the West Bank would add further strain to the army. “Every force that is taken out of Lebanon is a problem,” said Amidror.
“Now we are just pushing Hezbollah to the north of Lebanon to protect the Israeli communities near the border,” he added.
“The minute the war in Iran ends, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) will move to an offensive posture, which means huge ground forces going into Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah completely and destroying all their facilities by air attacks, all over Lebanon. It will be a huge operation,” he warned.
“Until Hezbollah is disarmed, Israel will remain in Lebanon,” the former army general said. In retaliation for the killing of the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Tehran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel, prompting it to also launch an offensive in Lebanon on 2 March.
Barnavi offered a different take. “If the war in Iran stops, it will stop in Lebanon too. Hezbollah will not continue the fight on its own, Hezbollah is an extension of Iran. And the Lebanese state for once is aligned with us and against Hezbollah.”
“It would be a big mistake to occupy south Lebanon. I don’t think the government will do that. There will a buffer zone, yes but Israel will ready to negotiate,” Barnavi said.
Hezbollah is financially and militarily supported by Iran, which was already weakened when it lost another strong ally: former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
No war fatigue
Both Barnavi and Amidror underlined that a month into the war, a great majority of Israelis, excluding Arab citizens, remains unified in a ‘rally around the flag’ posture.
“According to polls in Israel, people and the political opposition are united in this war. If there are critics, they’re not bold enough” to make a difference, said Amidror.
Barnavi agreed that broad support for the war is still there, but has notably declined after a month.
Recent surveys by the Israeli Democracy Institute show a drop from a whopping 93% of Israeli Jews in favour of the offensive at the beginning of March, down to 78% at the end of that same month.
“People are starting to realise that the goals of this war are not well defined and that we haven’t reached total victory yet as Netanyahu had promised. But war will stop only when Trump decides so,” Barnavi said.
“War is more unpopular there as it is here because the United States is not directly threatened by Iran.”
Religious, extremist settlers real threat to Israel’s survival
“The real threat to Israel’s survival is not Iran or the Palestinians, these are problems we can tackle and we know how to. The real threat comes from within: it is the ultra-nationalist religious Jews,” said Barnavi, and those especially active in the West Bank, where they promote the expansion of settlements on private Palestinian land and have attacked Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.
“(Israel’s army chief) Zamir is growing frustrated not out of humanitarian concern (for the Palestinians) but because he now understands that there is a real festering sore of Jewish terrorism which demands considerable troop deployment,” to the West Bank, “troops that he doesn’t have,” Barnavi explained.
Short of calling them terrorists — a term some Israeli opposition politicians have used to qualify ultra-nationalist settlers — Zamir has slammed their violent tactics as” morally and ethically unacceptable”, saying they were perpetrated by a “threatening minority from within.”
Ultra-nationalist religious settlers radically differ in their views from ultra-Orthodox Jews. They believe that settling the land is a religious commandment and serve in the army.
By contrast, the ultra-Orthodox believe that a Jewish state can only be established by the Messiah. They tolerate the state of Israel in its current secular form but refuse conscription.
Surge in settler violence prompts unusual US rebuke
Attacks by violent settlers have spiked since the October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel.
In 2025, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,800 attacks against Palestinians and the displacement of some 1,600.
A total of 240 Palestinians have been killed either by settlers or the army in 2025. 17 Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same period.
Radical Jewish settler elements have been emboldened by the presence of hardline politicians in the Israeli government, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
In 2023, Smotrich established a new government body called the “Settlements Administration” that he personally oversees, and which allows for quicker decisions on settlement expansion.
Even the US administration, usually mum on Israel’s rapid settlement expansion under Netanyahu, said it was “concerned” in the words of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a G7 summit last week.
“The Israelis themselves have expressed (concern) … You’ve seen that some of these groups and individuals — maybe they’re settlers, maybe they’re just street thugs — have attacked Israeli security forces as well, so I think you’ll see the government there do something about it,” Rubio said.
A confidential document recently obtained by Euronews shows instructions by the office of Netanyahu to the Israeli army and police to crack down on settler violence. It states that IDF troops in the West Bank would be “reinforced to strengthen the combating of nationalist crimes and to ensure the effective presence of forces in areas of friction.”
No new settlement outposts will be allowed in Area B, a section of the West Bank which is under joint Palestinian and Israeli control.
The document also mentions the establishment of a special administration within the Ministry of Defence to address the “Hilltop Youth” phenomenon, in reference to extremist religious-nationalist Jewish youth living in the West Bank who advocate for the expulsion of all Palestinians and the establishment of a religious state.
Netanyahu has in the past condemned settler violence, although he usually describes it as the work of a few extremists rather than a widespread phenomenon, making this shift in policy and the recall of troops all the more remarkable.
Opinions split on Netanyahu containing settler attacks
“The police is under the thumb of Ben-Gvir, they won’t do anything. Some of the army is recruited from the settlements themselves. Nothing will change, nothing will move,” cautioned Barnavi.
“The ideology of Greater Israel has infiltrated part of the army, including the general overseeing the West Bank, Bluth.”
Avi Bluth heads the army’s Central Command, in charge of security and military operations across the West Bank, and originates from the religious-Zionist settler community, although he has publicly criticised radical settler groups and condemned violence.
On Monday, the army said it was pulling a battalion from the West Bank after soldiers displaying strong sympathy for settlers allegedly attacked a CNN crew filming an illegal outpost.
The crew and Palestinians on whose land the outpost was established were briefly detained.
Amidror dismissed the idea that hardline ministers were supportive of violent settler tactics.
In late March, in an uncharacteristic move, Smotrich did acknowledge settler violence but framed it as a marginal issue that endangers the wider goal of settlement expansion.
“For the future of Israel, Netanyahu should be serious about cracking down on extremist settlers because they are damaging Israel, internationally, domestically and our relations with the Palestinians,” Amidror said.
