It Could Happen Here Weekly 251

September 26, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In late July 2024, Israeli soldiers and settlers together attacked six Palestinian men who were installing metal bars and window shields on their homes in the village of Kosra, south of Nablus. The men were not protesting. They were fastening metal to their own houses to protect themselves from settler attacks. The army then arrested all six of them. That image—the state arresting people for trying to shield themselves from the same people the state protects—is a working definition of what is happening across the West Bank, and it is not a spike in violence by a fringe. It is a policy.

The Siege and the Bureaucracy

On August 9th, settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the neighborhood of Rosedayan, on the edge of Kosra. They did not leave. Twenty-one days later, at least four people were still inside one of those houses, cut off from water, electricity, and basic supplies. Getting food to them required coordination through the village mayor and took three to four days. The Israeli army erected three new roadblocks. In July, the village mosque was burned. This is not a raid or a rampage. It is a siege with a bureaucracy attached.

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What you'll learn

1 It Could Happen Here Weekly 251 — Navigation Outline
2 West Bank: Settler Violence as State Policy
3 (03:50) **Siege as Bureaucracy, Not Rampage** - Daniel Ackard introduces the framing puzzle: settler violence in the West Bank is described by Western outlets and Israeli officials as a "violent fringe," but the evidence suggests a coordinated state policy
4 (06:10) **Livestock Theft with Military Accompaniment** - Journalist Basel Adra documents organized theft of goats and sheep in the South Hebron Hills, with soldiers present who do nothing or actively assist settlers
5 (08:12) **Land Seizure Dressed as Security** - The Israeli Central Command signed an order taking land from Bil'in and three neighboring villages to build a "security road" connecting a settlement to an outpost
6 (10:23) **Armed Hikes as Territorial Doctrine** - Organized settler hiking groups with names like "Hiking Buddies" publish routes crossing Palestinian farmland, with military coordination and armed escorts
7 (12:48) **The Division of Labor Between State and Settlers** - Netanyahu calls this "a handful of rioters," but a riot doesn't have logistics, paperwork, or a decade-long track record of coordination

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file:

West Bank Takeover
The AI Regulation Debate
Diversity With Andrew
Gas Prices and Oil Wars
Executive Disorder: Trump Bans the “Free Press,” Palestinian National Council Elections, ICE Shooting, Canadian Neoliberalism

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Sources/Links:

West Bank Takeover

The AI Regulation Debate