Settlement sanctions are theater. Hathalin’s murder reveals covering up Crimes against humanity star-news.press/wp

On July 28, 2025, an Israeli settler opened fire on the Palestinian activist, except for Hathalin in his chest, causing injuries later proved deadly. The video was arrested, and the shooter was identified as Yinon Levi, a settler previously punishable by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States under the Biden Administration.

Hathalin, 31, was a beloved activist and a teacher from Massifer Yata in the southern Hebron hills. He also played a supportive role in the Oscar -winning no -butter movie, which depicts the story of his village, has been subjected to uncompromising attacks by settlers and soldiers aligned to the settlers for decades.

Hathalin was killed away from the isolated. He is one of more than 1,000 Palestinians who have been killed in the West Bank since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023. This increase in violence coincides with a sharp rise in Palestinian territory and the demolition of the house. The Israeli government used the genocide in Gaza as a cover to accelerate the acquisitions of the West Bank. A few days before it entered the three -month rest period, the Israeli Knesset approved a movement that is not bound to include the entire lands.

The KnesSet proposal comes one year after the International Court of Justice in July 2024 (ICJ) that Israel’s continuous occupation of the Palestinian territories that it seized in 1967 is illegal and must end. The court ordered the Israeli regime to dismantle settlements, provide compensation and facilitate the return of the displaced Palestinians, in September 2025 as the deadline.

In the months before the International Court of Justice, countries, including Australia, France, the United Kingdom and Canada, announced sanctions on a handful of settlers and entities participating in the settlement institution. Hathalin’s murderer, Yenon Levy, was among those who were approved. However, as expected, the travel ban and the financial restrictions imposed by these countries would not have any effect on the ground. Levy continued his attacks on the Palestinians from his illegal site, as he was working under the protection of the full army.

These sanctions have not only had any effect, but by increasing the number of settlers rather than addressing the broader mechanism of settler colonialism, they also allow the Israeli regime to escape accountability by providing settlers’ violence as a deviation rather than an extension of the state policy.

Through deliberate discrimination between “extremist” settlers and the rest of the Israeli regime, countries implement symbolic measures that enable them to situation as international law defenders while avoiding any confrontation with the system itself.

The truth is that Israel is working as a settlement institution, and the state’s policy has always been to expand its lands through all historical Palestine and beyond, as it is clear from the occupation of parts of southern Syria and Lebanon over the past two years.

Today, more than 700,000 settlers reside in the West Bank and East Jerusalem through more than 250 settlements and settlement sites, all of which violate and sustain international law through state infrastructure, security forces and planning agencies. This expansion has been enabled by hollow measures such as the punishment of Levy, as only a few individuals targeted to protect the system responsible for the system they support.

This political theater is completely ridiculous. One cannot punish settlers ’violence useful while maintaining the full diplomatic, economic and military support of a system, by definition, a settler system. The settler and the state are inseparable. For one punishment with the legitimacy of the other is not accountability; It is collusion. The murder of the Hathalin is not an homosexual, but the direct result of this system, which is protected, funded and impossible by the countries themselves that claim to oppose it. Such procedures do not challenge the current situation; It holds and normalizes it. The breaking of this session requires that countries end their support for the settlement and genocide system in Israel completely, through comprehensive sanctions and real accountability targeting the system, and not only its deadly soldiers.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.