The occupation also has numerous critics within Israel itself, with some Israeli conscriptsrefusing to serve due to their objections to the occupation.[29] The legal status of the occupation itself, and not just the actions taken as a part of it, have been increasingly scrutinized by the international community and by scholars in the field of international law, with most finding that regardless of whether the occupation had been legal when it began, it has become illegal over time.[30][page needed][31][page needed][j]
14 years beforeThe Settlers, Louis Theroux made the 2011 documentaryThe Ultra Zionists; it was similarly centred on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.[32][33]
Earlier in 2025, the BBC had released and subsequently pulled a separate documentary on theeffect of the Gaza war on children in the Gaza Strip in Palestine titledGaza: How to Survive a Warzone. It was pulled after it was reported that the child who narrated the film was the son of the deputy minister for agriculture in the rulingHamas administration.[34]
Production
The film's creation was announced on 10 February 2025. It was commissioned by the BBC's Head of Documentary Commissioning Clare Sillery. It was directed by Josh Baker withsenior producer Sara Obeidat,producer Matan Cohen, production manager Emily Wallace, andexecutive producers Fiona Stourton and Arron Fellows.[32]
Louis Theroux travelled to the West Bank for three weeks in late 2024 to film the documentary. He characterised his style of documentary film making as "perpetrator focused".[35] Describing his intentions when creating the film, he wrote:
My aim was to observe [Israeli ultra-nationalist settlers] up close, to try to understand their mind-set and their actions, and to get a sense of the impact of their presence on the lives of the millions of Palestinians who live in the region.[35]
In the documentary, Theroux interviews and observes both Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and members of the Israeli settler movement. Theroux interviews Ari Abramowitz, an Israeli settler fromTexas, United States.[36][37]
He speaks with and follows prominentfar-rightZionist settlerDaniella Weiss as she holds meetings of groups aiming toreoccupy the Gaza Strip and makes an attempt to enter the territory herself.[33][38] During the film, she claims to have recruited 800 Israeli families to become future settlers in the Gaza Strip; she also claims that the movement has the support ofIsraeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu, who she says is unable to express it publicly.[38]
Theroux meets Malkiel Bar-Hai, a founder of the settlementEvyatar.[37][39]
He talks to and travels through the occupied Palestinian city ofHebron withIssa Amro, a Palestinian activist, navigating throughIDF checkpoints and around areas in which Amro and other Palestinians are not allowed.[40][41]
While Theroux is with Mohammad Hureini, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli occupation inMasafer Yatta, Hureini, his crew, and him have to hide in a building as Israeli soldiers point guns and laser sights at them.[37][42]
Reception and Aftermath
Stuart Heritage, writing forThe Guardian, frames the film as a comeback for Theroux after his perceived downturn post-COVID-19 pandemic, describing it as a "true watershed moment in his career".[33] He rated it 5 out of 5stars,[33] as did Gerard Gilbert ofThe i Paper who described it as "among his best".[37] William Mullally, who similarly rated it a '5/5', ofThe National wrote that it "has the chance to change hearts and minds around the world" because of Theroux's positive reputation and BBC platform.[43]
In an opinion piece forMiddle East Eye,Peter Oborne said that the art of the film was in how it almost exclusively used the words of Israeli settlers themselves to illustrate their "inhumanity" andethno-nationalist beliefs, but also criticised Theroux for what he viewed as omissions, notably in not using the wordapartheid.[44]
Reactions to the film on social media were generally positive.[48][46][49]
Mohammad Hureini
In an opinion piece published on 6 May 2025 byMondoweiss, Mohammad Hureini, one of the Palestinians featured inThe Settlers, criticised the documentary for leaving out parts they filmed where he explained his family's history dating back to theNakba and his view of what he calls the "ongoing Nakba" from the final film, describing it as a "crucial part" of his story as a Palestinian.[42]
BBC’s choice was clear: to frame the situation as a present day political disagreement rather than the continuation of a decades-long campaign to displace and erase an entire people.[42]
He characterised its exclusion as "sanitiz[ing]" and "dull[ing] the impact" of Palestinians stories. He wrote,
It’s as if they wanted to show the surface of the crisis, without digging into its roots; as if they feared that exposing the full truth about settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the enduring legacy of the Nakba would make viewers uncomfortable.Well, it should make them uncomfortable.[42]
Raid on the home of Issa Amro
In May 2025, after the film's release, Issa Amro stated in a post onTwitter that his home in Hebron was raided and robbed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in retaliation for his participation in the documentary.[50] His post included videos of settlers forcing themselves onto his property and soldiers with their faces covered bybalaclavas.[51] Amro said that Israeli police told him not to file a report and threatened him with arrest.[52] Therouxretweeted Amro's post on his own Twitter page, saying that his team had been in contact with Amro since the documentary and were "monitor[ing] the situation".[51]
No Other Land, 2024 Palestinian documentary on resistance to the Israeli occupation and forced displacement of Palestinians inMasafer Yatta
Notes
^On 7 June 1967, Israel issued "Proclamation Regarding Law and Administration (The West Bank Area) (No. 2)—1967" which established the military government in the West Bank and granted the commander of the area full legislative, executive, and judicial power. The proclamation kept in force local law that existed on 7 June 1967, except where contradicted by any new proclamation or military order (Weill 2007, p. 401;Weill 2014, p. 19)
^Jordan claimed it had a provisional sovereignty over the West Bank, a claim revoked in 1988 when it accepted thePalestinian National Council's declaration of statehood in that year. Israel did not accept this passage of a claim to sovereignty, nor asserted its counterclaim, holding that the Palestinian claim of sovereignty is incompatible with the fact that Israel is, in law, a belligerent occupant of the territory.[5] Secondly it regards the West Bank as a disputed territory on the technical argument that the Fourth Geneva Convention's stipulations do not apply since, in its view, the legal status of the territory issui generis and not covered by international law, a position rejected by theInternational Court of Justice (ICJ).[6]
^"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is as prototypical case of a conflict which meets the criteria describing an intractable conflict: it is prolonged, irreconcilable, violent and perceived as having zero-game nature and total." (Shaked 2016, p. 134)
^"Decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court have held that the Israeli occupation of the territories has endured far longer than any occupation contemplated by the drafters of the rules of international law." (Lazar 1990, p. 7)
^The International Court of Justice has rejected the Israeli view that the territory is not occupied and ruled that Israel's "continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful" (International Court of Justice 2024).
^The Hebrew word for Jewish settlement across the Green Line ishitnakhalut[20] and for "settlers",mitnakhalim implying an inheritance (nakhal),[21] whereas the contemporary Palestinian Arabic term for them,mustawtinin, etymologically suggests those who have taken root, or indigenized natives,[22] a term that historically has not borne negative connotations. "There was nothing derogatory or prejudicial in the use of the termal-mustawtinin, nor did it apply to Jews alone. It could refer equally to any Muslim who had recently taken up residence in Jerusalem but who had been born elsewhere within the Empire".[23] Down to 1948, Palestinians called Zionist settlements (but not traditional Jewish communities such as those in Hebron,Tiberias and Jerusalem whose residents were often calledYahud awlad Arab, "Arab Jews/Jews who are the sons of Arabs")kubaniya (companies) ormusta'amara/mustawtana only in the written language, and settlerskhawaja (master, foreigner),musta'amara (colony, implying invasion andmusta'amarin (colonizers) entered colloquial usage after 1948. From 1967 to 1993,al-mustawtin ("one who has turned the land into his homeland") andal mustawtana came to the fore to denote, respectively, settlers and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.[24]
^"At least five categories of major violations ofinternational human rights law and humanitarian law characterize the occupation: unlawful killings; forced displacement; abusive detention; the closure of the Gaza Strip and other unjustified restrictions on movement; and the development of settlements, along with the accompanying discriminatory policies that disadvantage Palestinians" (HRW 2017a).
^While Arab citizens of Israel, most of whom are ethnically Palestinian, can vote in Israeli national elections and live under civilian, not military, rule, very few live in the West Bank settlements, whose funding and purpose is directed at promoting Jewish residency.
^Julie Peteet also argues that there is an Israeli narrative ofexceptionalism which works to "exempt" it from such comparisons (Peteet 2016, p. 249).
^"even if the occupation was not illegalab initio, it has been rendered illegal over time for being in violation of the aforementionedjus cogens norms." (Imseis 2023, pp. 197, 215)
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