A confrontation between settlers and residents of the northern West Bank village of Tell on Friday 24 July left six people dead, two Israelis and four Palestinians. Israeli forces conducted raids afterwards, arrested dozens of Palestinians, and imposed movement restrictions on nearby villages.
The military has identified roughly seventy Palestinian village watch groups operating across the territory. They are currently unarmed. A senior Israeli military official has framed the concern as what follows if that changes, which is an unusual thing for a military to say out loud about a civilian phenomenon it is also policing.
The groups did not appear from nowhere. Yesh Din researcher Yonatan Kanonich and Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Torat Tzedek have documented a rising tempo of settler attacks: 32 Palestinian towns targeted between 15 June and 14 July, and 47 population centres in the month before that. Around 80 Palestinians were injured in physical assaults, alongside arson against vehicles, homes and mosques.
Watch groups are what communities build when they conclude that protection will not arrive. Whether they stay unarmed is not a decision those communities will make in isolation, and the military official quoted appears to understand that the answer depends on the next few months of attacks rather than on any order the army can issue.