Key points

• The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. 
• Israeli settlements began expanding in the occupied West Bank soon after 1967. 
• In 2005, Israel evacuated four settlements in the northern West Bank. 
• The occupied territory is central to plans for a future Palestinian state, but violent settlement expansion is a growing obstacle to a negotiated two-State solution.

According to reports, the United States has been involved in efforts to end the siege that began on Sunday, with the US Ambassador to Israel calling for the removal of what he called “Israeli terrorists”.

Three Palestinian families – around 15 people in total, including at least two children – have remained confined to their homes “in a state of terror” in the Ras al Ein area of Qusra village, south of Nablus, OHCHR said, alleging that the settlers had cut their power and water. 

“These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and their land,” the UN office said. “Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced”.

Nowhere to go 

Following the initial OHCHR statement, head of the UN office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajith Sunghay, told UN News that the families had been subsequently moved into just one home, which remains surrounded by Israeli settlers.

“Again, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is either unable or unwilling to protect Palestinian communities, which they are expected to do so under the Geneva Convention; or worse, that the IDF is in collusion with the Israeli settlers, all aimed at displacing Palestinians and occupying their lands,” Mr. Sunghay said.

He also noted that about 20 Palestinian families from Qusra had been evacuated by Israel Defense Forces soldiers “for security purposes”, before stressing the urgent need for international assistance to end the increasingly dangerous situation in the occupied territory.

He added: “We really welcome statements, we really welcome dialogue…However, this is simply not enough. I think we are past the stage of boiling point. We are seeing unprecedented level of settler violence and we call on Member States to act, use its leverage in every possible manner.”

OHCHR noted that Palestinians living in Qusra have been the target of “increasingly frequent attacks” since November 2025, when Israeli settlers established an outpost nearby.

Previous requests from the Palestinian families to the Israeli military present at the site to intervene have not helped.

“Instead, Israeli security forces seem to have blocked medics, solidarity activists and journalists from reaching the families,” OHCHR said, adding that although soldiers dismantled settlers’ tents on Wednesday, they continued to surround the Palestinians’ homes.

Escalating situation 

Mr. Sunghay noted that the dramatic events in Qusra were unfolding alongside other deeply worrying settler-driven incidents in the occupied West Bank.

This includes the IDF move to cordon off Taybeh town to people who do not live there on Tuesday, allegedly to protect them from Israeli settler attacks. 

“In such circumstances…it’s the Palestinians who pay the price and face the brunt of the problems, although it’s the Israelis who are settlers who are creating violence, attacks, and issues for the Palestinians,” the OHCHR senior official insisted. 

In another blow to peace efforts in the occupied West Bank, Mr. Sunghay noted that Israeli settlers have moved back into Ganim, one of four Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank that were evacuated in 2005 (the others being Kadim, Sa-Nur and Homesh). “This is a trend that we have seen repeatedly that’s happening in West Bank,” he said.

Latest data from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Thursday highlighted how Israeli settler “violence and harassment” have continued to target Palestinian communities across the West Bank. This includes those living in the South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley. 

“In parallel, settlement expansion continued, including the establishment of several new settlement outposts,” UNRWA said.

Reality of Operation ‘Iron Wall’

The agency noted that Israeli forces have extended a military closure order affecting the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps in the northern West Bank until 30 September 2026 and Jenin camp until 20 August 2026.

The move is a renewal of earlier closure orders which have severely restricted access to the largely emptied camps, UNRWA insisted. Today, more than 34,000 Palestinian refugees remain forcibly displaced from Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin camps as a result of the Israeli military’s operation “Iron Wall”, which began in January 2025.

Violence in the occupied West Bank is worsening as the Israeli Government continues to approve new settlements while settlers and Israeli security forces have “often” acted together to attack local Palestinian communities, the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) warned on Wednesday.

Israeli prosecutors have charged a settler over the killing of a Palestinian activist in the occupied West Bank who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

Yinon Levy was charged with reckless manslaughter over the July 2025 shooting of Odeh Hathaleen, according to Israel’s Southern District Prosecutor’s Office.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem said it was the first time an Israeli had been indicted for killing a Palestinian in the West Bank for nearly three years.

A lawyer for Hathaleen’s family said they hoped the charges marked a “turning point” in the consequences settlers face for violence against Palestinians.

In a letter seen by The Associated Press, Levy said he would fight for his innocence in court.

He wrote that prosecutors should not penalise acts of self-defence and accused them of providing “de facto support for terrorism”, the news agency reported.

A lawyer for Levy, Avichai Hajbi, told the AP the prosecution had made a “mistaken decision”.

The charges against Levy also include ​armed trespassing and malicious property damage during the incident in which settlers operated an excavator in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, leading to a confrontation with residents.

According to the indictment, at some point during the confrontation Levy cocked his gun and fired in the direction of residents, hitting Hathaleen. He then fired another shot into the air, prosecutors said.

Footage of the incident was shared widely online. Levy has previously denied firing the shot that killed Hathaleen.

The indictment is the first since the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which triggered the Gaza war and led to a rise in settler violence in the West Bank, B’Tselem said.

At least 1,110 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since then, according to the UN. At least 41 Israelis have been killed either by a Palestinian armed group or civilian in the West Bank during the same period, the UN said.

B’Tselem described the decision to indict Levy as the “exception that proves the rule”.

“The impunity Israel grants to soldiers and settlers who harm Palestinians is not a failure of the system – it is a central component of a policy designed to allow the violence to continue and escalate,” it said.

Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene, told the BBC: “I think the general reaction is happiness that anything is happening while also feeling that it should be a murder charge and a longer maximum sentence.

“Mixed feelings but also certainly pleasantly surprised and happy there might be consequences,” he added.

Hathaleen, a teacher and father-of-three, was a prominent voice against settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

He featured in the 2025 Oscar-winning film No Other Land, that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to allow the demolition of homes and expulsion of more than 1,000 villagers in 2022.

Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024 because he “used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”, the UK government said at the time.

He denied the allegations to the BBC in 2024.

He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration but those sanctions were subsequently lifted under President Donald Trump.

Additional reporting by Mallory Moench

Israelis in the West Bank are still subject to Israel’s civilian law and enjoy widespread freedom of movement, while Palestinians are subject to Israel’s military occupation and military courts, and are tightly restricted by road closures and checkpoints – a system described by some prominent human rights groups as “apartheid”.

Israel has rejected that label as “absurd and distorted”.

Asked about the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, Shimon laid out three options: live quietly under Israeli rule and ownership of the land; voluntarily emigrate to other Arab or Muslim nations; or “if you don’t want to make peace with us, and you don’t want to get out, I don’t have a choice: I must kill you, and I kill you all,” he said.

This vision from one radical settler seems strikingly close to a plan outlined by Israel’s now-Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in a blueprint published in 2017, before he joined the government.

In it, he presented a plan for the West Bank in which Palestinians would be told to give up any struggle for a Palestinian state and live quietly under Israeli rule. Those who had “difficulty letting go of national ambitions” could leave the territory, he said at the time, and those who stayed and continued armed struggle against Israel would be killed by Israel’s armed forces.

More recently, while in government, he has pushed for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the re-settlement of Israelis there, and has described Palestinian identity as “an invention”.

One Palestinian living within sight of Havat Gilad told me she watched the outpost from her window constantly, for signs of an imminent settler attack.

Many Palestinians we spoke to said they felt unprotected – that Israel’s occupying army was focused on protecting Israeli settlers, that their own security forces were absent, and that the international community had abandoned them.

“It’s a very bad situation,” one told me. “Europe is busy, America is occupied with Iran, China doesn’t care, Russia is fighting Ukraine, the UN are finished and the Arabs have internal problems. We don’t know what we can do.”

From Havat Gilad, the nearest Palestinian villages are less than a mile away, but the landscape here is divided by Israeli law, Israeli power and mutual hostility.

Additional reporting by Oren Rosenfeld and Rebecca Hartmann

As of 24 July, the agency reports that 76 Palestinians and one Israeli have died this year in settler attacks. Since Friday, eight Palestinians, including a boy, and two members of the Israeli military have also been killed in the region.

The number of settler attacks has increased each year since 2023 following the brutal Hamas attacks on southern Israeli communities, rising to 1,835 last year, according to the UN’s humanitarian aid office (OCHA). 

There were about 190 attacks per month in the first four months of 2026, putting the West Bank on a trajectory to reach more than 2,000 attacks by the end of the year.

Alongside security forces, Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with financial incentives from the government, frequently attack families, burn mosques and destroy and confiscate property, OHCHR reported.

Movement restrictions preventing Palestinians from accessing essential services are now tighter than ever, the office added.

“We are alarmed by the Israeli Government’s announcement to further increase the number of settlements and outposts and open calls by Israeli leaders for revenge and collective punishment against Palestinian communities, accompanied by threats to turn the West Bank into another Gaza,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said.

Two-State solution must remain

Speaking from Jerusalem on Friday, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov called the continued loss of life in the West Bank “deeply alarming”, urging Israel to hold perpetrators accountable and all actors to pursue a two-state solution.

“There is no military or violent solution to this conflict,” Mr. Alakbarov said.

In September, the General Assembly endorsed the New York Declaration, calling for a two-State solution, though Israel and the US voted against it.

The escalating violence in the West Bank comes two years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967 is illegal and that countries should not recognise Israel’s actions related to the occupation. Israel quickly condemned the ruling.

Briefing the Security Council in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Alakbarov noted that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently announced the approval of several new settlements, which the peace coordinator called “illegal under international law”.

“I call upon all parties to take urgent steps to reverse the dangerous trajectory in the West Bank,” he said.

Call to end occupation

OHCHR’s Ms. Shamdasani reiterated on Wednesday the UN’s call for countries to work together to “bring an end to the Israeli occupation” of the West Bank.

“With attacks by Israeli settlers, and the creation of settlements and outposts hitting an all-time high, third States must act urgently and in unison to halt the continuing killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people,” she said.

These growers include Taysir Dahdouh, whose farm in the Zeytun neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, is a little smaller than a football pitch. 

His land was once covered with greenhouses, but they’ve been destroyed or lost during the conflict that erupted on 7 October 2023. Today, he needs tools, seeds, fertilizer and water to grow the cucumbers and tomatoes he used to.

200 new homes

Alessandro Mrakic, Head of the Gaza Office for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told UN News’s correspondent in the enclave that families who had once lived in one heavily bombed area had had to move multiple times before returning. 

“We have provided 200 relief housing units to provide shelter to the families who came back and started, as you see behind me, agriculture – started producing eggplants, tomatoes, molokhia, among others,” he said.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday it has scaled up its cash assistance programme to help around 1,500 Palestinian farmers cultivate land across Gaza during the 2026 planting season, enough to produce fresh vegetables for more than 100,000 people.

Not enough space

But FAO warned that farmers “are squeezed into rapidly shrinking space” amid ongoing Israeli military activity, and it is calling for access to land, sea and production inputs including seeds, fertilizers, irrigation equipment and fishing gear.

Elsewhere, Deputy Special Coordinator for the peace process Ramiz Alakbarov welcomed new commitments worth almost $58 million from eight Member States to the UN Horizon Fund, and called on further partners to join the initiative. 

The World Food Programme (WFP) said people forced to move within Gaza risk losing access to basic services and called for safe access to reach those in need; despite the obstacles, it and its partners reached more than a quarter of a million people across 36 distribution sites in the first 12 days of this month.

Summer respite

Humanitarian partners also distributed more than 5,440 educational kits to support around 217,600 children during summer learning activities.

Turning to the West Bank, a high-level delegation led by aid coordination office OCHA visited Deir Nidham village in the Ramallah governorate on Wednesday, meeting Palestinian families affected by settler violence and the expansion of settlement outposts. 

Settler attacks accounted for around 55 per cent of all Palestinian injuries in the West Bank so far during 2026.

Guterres voices alarm

UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the Secretary-General is “deeply alarmed” that Israeli authorities have granted city status to Givat Ze’ev, a settlement northwest of Jerusalem, adding that the designation “does not alter the city’s legal status under international law as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, Mr. Dujarric reiterated, recalling the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2024. 

He said settlements remain a major obstacle to a two-State solution, and renewed the Secretary-General’s call on Israel to halt all settlement expansion.

“For too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the Government of Israel,” said the joint statement from the British, Australian, Canadian, French and Norwegian foreign ministers. “In some cases, settler violence takes place under the protection of Israel’s security forces”

Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), launched its latest report which covers the period between 7 October 2023 and 31 May 2025 following Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza.

It documents large-scale violations of international law, including atrocity crimes, and points to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by Israeli and Palestinian parties.

Lasting consequences

“One year later, despite the ceasefire concluded in October 2025, the lasting consequences of the patterns we documented are apparent,” said Mr. Sunghay.

“The ceasefire diminished the immense scale of violence up that point and opened some modest humanitarian space. But killings and the destruction of infrastructure have continued on an almost daily basis, and the overall humanitarian situation remains dire. All while Hamas continues its own violations, including against the people of Gaza.”

The reporting period saw unprecedented levels of killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces, the tightening and escalation of Israeli control over Palestinians and their land, and “concerning conduct” by Palestinian authorities and armed groups such as indiscriminate rocket fire against Israel and the taking of hostages.

Deadly attacks, devastating violence

Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity when they attacked civilians in Israel on and after 7 October 2023, killed at least 1,124 people, seized hostages and fired thousands of unguided missiles into Israeli territory for over a year.

“Released hostages have provided credible accounts of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence,” said Mr. Sunghay.

Meanwhile, “Israel unleashed devastating violence and dispossession in Gaza and the West Bank, committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity,” he said.

He noted that the report found that the totality of Israeli conduct in Gaza raises serious concern about the country’s compliance with its obligation to prevent acts within the scope of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

Blockade, starvation and displacement

“The fact remains that Palestinians have no means to ensure their survival or to protect their loved ones, with hundreds killed since the announcement of a ceasefire,” Mr. Sunghay said.

“The Israeli military has killed 72,769 Palestinians since 7 October 2023 in Gaza: in their homes, in IDP shelters, in hospitals, in schools, in places of worship, on the streets, while queuing for aid, while trying to fish in the sea.”

Moreover, “the Israeli blockade on Gaza resulted in starvation and famine that was foretold and later confirmed,” and hundreds died.  He stressed that “any use of starvation as a method of war against civilians is a war crime, and it may amount to a crime against humanity and even genocide in certain conditions.”

Mr. Sunghay also addressed displacement in Gaza which has raised concerns about ethnic cleansing and forcible transfer. People have fled neighbourhoods which are now gone “as Israeli forces continue to unlawfully demolish buildings across Gaza – homes still laden with thousands of unretrieved Palestinian bodies.”

‘Unprecedented’ settlement expansion

Regarding the West Bank, he said that the rate of forcible displacement “is unseen in decades”, describing Israeli settlement expansion there as “unprecedented”.

“Israeli military and police forces and settlers are killing more and more Palestinians with impunity, often together,” he added. Since the 7 October attacks, they have killed 1,096 Palestinians, with children making up around 20 per cent, or one in five.

“Settler attacks are routinely carried out with the support, acquiescence, or participation of Israeli security forces,” he said.

“The Israeli Government has intensified the militarisation of the settler movement, shielded them from accountability, and now actively benefits from settler violence as a catalyst for its stated annexation agenda.”

Mr. Sunghay said the dispossession in the West Bank is “matched in intensity with the record rate of settlement expansion” which has increased by 80 per cent since the Government took office, with 102 new settlements added to the 127 that existed previously.  

Unable to return home

Furthermore, 33,000 Palestinians displaced from three refugee camps last year – Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams – are still unable to return to their homes. 

“Israeli authorities are forcing Palestinians out of their homes around the Old City in East Jerusalem at alarming levels, turning their properties over to settlers, or making room for settlement projects including a park and a cable car project,” he said.

The report also documented other patterns that have persisted, including the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody, which includes sexual violence and even rape, denial of sufficient food and medical care.

“Discriminatory practices have further reinforced Israel’s violation of the prohibition of apartheid and racial segregation,” he said.

‘Impunity fuels recurrence’

He noted that overall, not enough is being done to stop these violations.

“The ceasefire has not led to any forms of meaningful accountability for the violations committed in the preceding years. Nor has it led to any fundamental reckoning with the underlying driver – the protracted occupation,” he said.

“Impunity fuels recurrence. Most of the horrors documented here, and those documented for decades before, have gone unpunished, with no prospect of justice for the victims.”

Mr. Sunghay stressed that in addition to expressing condemnation, countries must urgently take every measure in line with international law to end the Israeli occupation, ensure the dismantlement of existing settlements, protect civilians, achieve accountability for serious violations by all parties, and ensure Palestinians are able to exercise their human rights.

“In a context like this, lack of action is not passivity. It is a license,” he said.