Netanyahu slams IDF drill simulating settlers kidnapping Palestinians

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded an investigation over an IDF drill that saw soldiers simulating a fight against Jewish settlers kidnapping Palestinians in the West Bank.

Following outrage over footage of the IDF’s training drill in Judea and Samaria on Monday, Netanyahu slammed the exercise as completely unrealistic and demanded answers over why such practice would be held in the first place.

“This fictitious scenario is disconnected from reality, inappropriate and does injustice to an entire and precious community of settlers at a time when many of them are fighting fiercely and even falling for the defense of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“I’m not willing to accept such heartlessness towards our brothers and sisters in Judea and Samaria,” he added.

The drill, which simulated West Bank settlers abducting a Palestinian in response to a terror attack, was one of more than 100 scenarios that were prepared for the troops and listed among the “extreme scenarios,” the IDF said in response to the backlash.

Footage from the drill showed the soldiers preparing for the exercise while several soldiers wore vests that marked them as an “enemy force.”

The military apologized for labeling the settlers in the scenario as such, adding that the IDF is not preparing for any fight against West Bank settlers, the Times of Israel reports.

The IDF did not drill scenarios that simulate settlers as an enemy, and the marking of the vests in question, whose purpose is to separate those training, is part of the exercise’s safety routine,” the IDF said. “In the present case, it was a mistake to mark them with such an inscription and we apologize for that.”

Despite Netanyahu and other Israeli officials slamming the drill as unrealistic, such events have occurred in the past.

In 2014, three Israelis confessed to the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped from his home in east Jerusalem and burned to death.

His murder preceded the abduction and death of three Israeli teens, with the revenge killings triggering a wave of violence across the West Bank.

Following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, conflicts in the West Bank soared as Israeli settlers continue to clash with Palestinians.

Last week, President Biden issued an executive order slapping sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of inciting a violence in the West Bank.

In his executive order, Biden said that the “high levels of extremist settler violence” have “reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”

The order came two weeks after the death of American Abdel Jabbar, 17, who was shot and killed in the West Bank on Jan. 19 in a case that remains under investigation.

The heightened violence over the war in Gaza made 2023 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank, with at least 507 people killed, including 81 children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.