Hilltop Youth: Israeli Settler Group's Growing Influence and Violence in West Bank

For years, a settler group known as the “Hilltop Youth” has spread destruction, fear, and danger in Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank. It’s comprised mostly of young Israeli settlers, intent on taking over the occupied West Bank by whatever means possible, including deadly violence.

The group’s early beginnings were in 1998, when Ariel Sharon, Israel’s foreign minister at the time, called on settler youths to take over the hilltops in the occupied West Bank to preempt final status negotiations with the Palestinians, including the issue of settlements.

Religious Zionist groups answered his call and began establishing settlement outposts across the occupied territory. These outposts were classified as illegal under Israeli law, even though all settlements, regardless of size or name, are illegal under international law.

Over the years, the Hilltop Youth intensified in size, violence, and influence over Israeli policy, as Jewish Israeli voters veered increasingly towards the right. In 2012, the Israeli Cabinet, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, retroactively authorised several illegal settlement outposts, giving the religious Zionist movement a considerable boost. In subsequent years, government support increased by way of favourable legislation, administrative orders, infrastructure support, military protection, and immunity from legal procedures.

Since the current Israeli government took office in December 2022, the Hilltop Youth have enjoyed a golden era. The number of settler attacks in the occupied West Bank is breaking records. The United Nations recorded more than 1,330 settler attacks during the first half of 2026, which Palestinian rights groups say is a conservative estimate. These activities include vandalism, arson, and physical and sexual assaults against Palestinians.

In a right-wing podcast, Elisha Yered, a prominent Hilltop Youth leader, recently boasted: “We’re very proud of initiating friction; even the army is in friction.” This “friction” results in settlers taking over more Palestinian land, he added.

The Hilltop Youth are also more brazen, even in the face of sanctions imposed by several Western governments on the groups and some of their leaders.

They publish promotional videos showing Israeli minors training in the hills of the occupied West Bank, and raise funds on social media platforms to further their cause. They even compile videos of their attacks on Palestinian communities and advertise the assaults in social media reels as achievements.

Hilltop Youth activists are regularly featured in mainstream Israeli media, often painted as pioneers and people defending the security of Israel while right-wing commentators and officials decry talk of settler violence as left-wing fabrications.

In an interview aired by the Israeli public broadcaster, a person identifying himself as an alumnus of the group said: “Classic Hilltop Youth is settling the land, focusing on the positive, focusing on taking action.”

In the past three years, settlers have built 200 outlying illegal outposts on the Palestinian hilltops. Elkhanah Nachmani, an Israeli settler in a so-called agricultural outpost, was interviewed by the right-wing Channel 14. He told the presenter: “It is not spiritual. The whole goal is to capture the area so that the Arabs don’t have control.”

The Hilltop Youth enjoy total impunity. During a recent Likud Party meeting, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz proudly announced: “I cancelled, on my own initiative, all administrative orders against settlers in the West Bank.”

Government backing is also financial, with Hilltop Youth members receiving nearly $40m in food and clothing subsidies from the Israeli government, in addition to military protection and other assistance.

Several ministers and prominent members of the Israeli parliament or Knesset are settlers themselves, including some who were leaders in the Hilltop Youth. Those include Zvi Sukkot, the head of the Knesset’s Education, Culture and Sports Committee, who was linked to the group. Before winning elections, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who now serves as the minister of national security, was a prominent settler provocateur. In 2007, he was convicted on charges of supporting a “terrorist” organisation and inciting racism and violence.

Other ministers use their positions in government to support the Hilltop Youth. Bezalel Smotrich, who holds the portfolios of finance and the settlement division in the Ministry of Defence, has approved tens of millions of dollars in programmes for settler outposts. These include stipends for food and clothing, and supplying settlers with all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) that are then used to raid Palestinian communities or take over land.

The Hilltop Youth were once identified as a fringe group. Today they are mainstream in Israeli politics. Given the right-wing trends in Jewish Israeli public opinion and in the absence of outside deterrence, the Hilltop Youth and the ideology they represent will claim a sizeable portion of power in upcoming elections.