Nablus: When the killer becomes the victim

In the occupied West Bank, the story often starts too late.

It starts when an Israeli settler is killed, injured, or frightened. It starts when Israeli officials speak, when the army enters Palestinian villages, and when headlines describe a “clash” or a “terror attack”. Suddenly, the settler becomes the victim, the Palestinian village becomes the threat, and the occupation disappears from the story.

But Nablus cannot be understood from the middle of the story.

For years, Palestinian villages around Nablus have lived under daily pressure: land seizures, settlement expansion, military raids, road closures, intimidation, and settler violence.

This is not a normal conflict between two equal communities. It is a system where one side expands with weapons, army protection, and state support, while the other side is expected to remain silent

That is why the recent events of yesterday near Nablus cannot simply be called a “clash”. The word sounds neutral, but the reality is not neutral. A clash suggests two equal sides. But there is no equality between armed settlers living on occupied land and Palestinians living in villages surrounded by settlements, checkpoints, and military control.

Of course, individual settlers can suffer. Death is death. Fear is fear. No human pain should be mocked or ignored. But the pain of one incident cannot erase the larger reality. A settler can be a victim in one moment, while still being part of a wider system that causes fear, dispossession, and daily suffering for Palestinians.

This is the contradiction: the executioner becomes the victim only when the story is cut away from its history.

When the headline begins with Israeli pain, Palestinian pain becomes invisible. The settler becomes a civilian under attack. The Palestinian becomes a security threat. The settlement becomes a neighbourhood. The occupied village becomes a battlefield. The army becomes “protection”. Resistance becomes “terrorism”. And the occupation, which created this whole reality, disappears.

This is not by accident. This is how power protects itself.

The settlement movement has always tried to make its presence in the West Bank look normal. It wants the world to see settlers as ordinary residents, not as people living inside a political project built on occupied land. It wants attacks on Palestinians to look like isolated events, while every Palestinian reaction is used to say that Palestinians are violent and must be controlled.

But the truth is simple: a system built on domination cannot bring security.

It can bring temporary control. It can create fear. It can silence people for a while. It can build walls, checkpoints, settler roads, and military zones. But it cannot bring peace. When land is taken, when homes are attacked, when settlers enter Palestinian villages, and when the army protects one side only, violence is not an accident. It becomes part of the system.

This does not mean every settler carries the same guilt. It does not mean every Israeli death should be dismissed. It means that individual suffering should not be used to hide collective power. The victimhood of the settler cannot be used to erase the long victimhood of the occupied.

Yet this is what often happens.

The Palestinian is asked to explain his anger. The settler is rarely asked to explain why he is there. The village is asked to condemn violence. The settlement is rarely asked to justify its existence. The occupied are told to stay calm, while the occupier calls control “security”.

That is why the phrase “when the executioner becomes the victim” matters. It is not a denial of human pain. It is a refusal to forget the political reality.

A settler killed in one incident may be a victim of that incident. But the settlement project remains a machine of dispossession. The grief of one Israeli family does not erase the daily fear of Palestinian families living beside armed settlers, checkpoints, and expanding settlements. One tragic day does not erase decades of occupation.

Nablus shows this clearly. The more Israel protects settlements, the more tension it creates. The more settlers expand, the more Palestinian space shrinks. The more Palestinian life is controlled, the more resistance becomes likely. Then, when violence erupts, Israel presents itself as surprised, as if it had no role in creating the conditions.

This is the oldest trick of domination: create the wound, then cry when the wound bleeds.

The question after Nablus is not only who fired first. That question matters, but it is not enough. The deeper question is: who built the reality where armed settlers, occupied villages, military raids, and daily humiliation became normal?

Who allowed settlers to move through Palestinian land with confidence, while Palestinians move through their own land with fear? Who turned settlements into protected facts, and villages into security zones? Who decided that Palestinian life could be restricted every day, then acted shocked when this reality produced violence?

Until these questions are answered, every incident will be treated as a beginning, when it is actually only another consequence.

When the executioner becomes the victim, the world must be careful. It must see human pain, but it must also see the political structure. It must mourn the dead, but it must not forget the system that keeps producing death.

Because the real tragedy is not only that people die. The real tragedy is that occupation creates the conditions for death, then asks the world to feel sorry when those conditions return to its own doorstep.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.