'I am the police' Life under brutal rule of a West Bank settler

'Call me Yakov," the burly, red-bearded settler told the Palestinian villagers who lived in his shadow. They should, it was understood, consider him their mukhtar, their chief, mayor and sheriff.

- Julian Borger and Quique Kierszenbaum

It was only after he was singled out for sanctions by the US government last week that they learned his real name: Yitzhak Levi Filant.

On paper, Filant is merely the security coordinator (ravshatz) of the Yitzhar settlement, perched on a West Bank hilltop south of Nablus overlooking a string of ancient Palestinian villages strung out on the steep slopes below.

However, with the frequent and arbitrary use of force, he has made himself a warlord of the whole Jabal Salman valley. He has stood out from a phalanx of brutal settler bosses to earn himself the title of "specially designated national" from the US Treasury and State Department, for "malign activities outside the scope of his authority" - blacklisted and banned from receiving funds from Americans.

The citation against him last month mentioned an incident in February this year when "he led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands".

This was just a single sample drawn from a regular pattern of intimidation which has continued up to the imposition of sanctions on 28 August. A week earlier, armed men had fired teargas into the football field of Burin high school, while children were playing.

"We haven't come here for more than a week because we are afraid the children will get injured," said Ghassan Najjar, the head of an agricultural cooperative. "We can't take responsibility for that." Najjar was speaking near a low stone wall at the back of the pitch, watched intently by armed men in a concrete observation post 100 metres up the hillside.