LONDON: Attacks on Palestinian villagers in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, and the seizure or demolition of their properties under lopsided laws, are nothing new. But, ever since the start of the war in Gaza, the number and nature of such incidents has intensified.

Several attacks over the past few weeks have added to the impression that not only have settlers been given carte blanche to do as they please, but also that discipline within the ranks of the Israeli army operating in the West Bank is breaking down.

Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 917 Palestinians, including militants, in the West Bank.

On March 27, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, revealed that in the first three months of this year alone, 99 Palestinians had been killed during operations by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

Tens of thousands had been displaced from their homes, 10 UN-run schools had been forced to close, and 431 homes lacking impossible-to-acquire Israeli-issued building permits had been demolished — twice as many as over the same period last year.

An Israeli army soldier walks with a blindfolded man being detained, towards an armoured vehicle during a military operation in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

Occasionally, such attacks are caught on camera. That was the case at the beginning of this month, when footage circulated purportedly showing masked settlers attacking the village of Duma in the northern West Bank, setting fire to homes.

On Feb. 29, dozens of settlers, accompanied by Israel Defense Forces personnel, descended on Jinba, a shepherding community, where, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “uniformed and civilian-dressed Israelis raided the village, broke into all the homes, dumped food, vandalized appliances and terrorized the locals.”

The supposed trigger for the attack on the village, after which dozens of Palestinian men were rounded up and arrested, was an alleged assault on a settler shepherd. In fact, phone footage later emerged appearing to show the man in question approaching Palestinians and their flock on an all-terrain vehicle and physically assaulting one of them.

“Land seizures and violence by settlers is not new, but there has been a huge increase,” Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, an architect and adviser to the Israeli nongovernmental organization Planners for Planning Rights, or Bimkom, told Arab News.

“What has changed is that there is now widespread collaboration between the settlers, the army, the authorities, and the police. Now, the army is the settler.”

Charred cars sit at the entrance of the occupied West Bank village of Duma, in the aftermath of an Israeli settler attack, on April 17, 2024. (AFP)

Often those involved in violence and intimidation are from IDF reserve units, whose members are settlers and are deployed near their own settlements, and “sometimes they are wearing uniforms, sometimes not.”

Rarely is anyone arrested. “The police put obstacles in the way of Palestinians who come to submit complaints,” said Cohen-Lifshitz.

“The army, the police, and the settlers have become a single unit, working together against the poorest, most fragile and marginalized communities that don’t do any harm. These people are not involved in anything, but they live in fear of the settlers.”

Their “crime” is that “they are living on land which Israel and the settlers want to control and ethnically cleanse,” he added.

Planning law is also being deployed against Palestinians in the West Bank. “Israel is using it like a weapon to conquer land,” said Cohen-Lifshitz.

According to Cohen-Lifshitz, “The army, the police, and the settlers have become a single unit, working together against the poorest, most fragile and marginalized communities that don’t do any harm.” (AFP)

It was planning law, he said, that led to the creation of settlements and the fragmentation of the West Bank, and “there are plans for the Palestinians, too, but the aim of these is to limit the development, to create very small areas in which building is allowed, but at a very high density, which is not how it used to be in Palestinian villages.

“There, it was about 10 units per hectare. Now the plans for Palestinian areas propose urban densities of 100 units, allowing the authorities to justify demolitions outside these areas.”

Over the past two years, however, “there has been a huge expansion in settlement outposts and farms. But, as far as we know, not a single permit for Palestinian building has been approved.”

Apparent indiscipline in the IDF ranks has not escaped the notice of the military top brass, who appear keen to ascribe poor conduct to reserve soldiers rather than core personnel.

Israeli excavators carry out the demolition of Palestinian buildings constructed without a permit in the village of Al-Samua, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

Although he did not comment on the violence in Duma, Israel’s top commander in the occupied West Bank, Major General Avi Bluth, condemned the actions of reservists during a raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem on April 2.

Images shared on social media showed vandalized apartments, where furniture was broken and Israeli nationalist slogans spray painted on walls. In a video shared by the army last week, Bluth said that “the conduct in Dheisheh by our reserve soldiers is not what we stand for.”

“Vandalism and graffiti during an operational mission are, from our perspective, unacceptable incidents. It is inconceivable that IDF soldiers do not act according to their commanders’ orders,” he added.

A Palestinian man walks past graffiti reading in Hebrew: “Revenge (R), Fight the enemy, not the ally (L)”, in a building after an attack by Israeli settlers, near the West Bank city of Salfit on April 8, 2025. (AFP)

It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the escalation in violence in the West Bank as the result of a collapse of discipline, said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon war.

“This is not about discipline. This is something else — the execution of a plan,” he said. “The war in Gaza is all but over. The main front now is the West Bank, where I think the Israelis are trying to implement a big plan to empty it of its people and annex it.”

The IDF, in Bregman’s view, has changed.

“Many IDF units, especially infantry, are now dominated by right-wing settlers. They have managed to penetrate these units to such an extent that I think it is not an exaggeration to say that many units, especially infantry, which is relevant because they are on the ground, are led by settlers.”

The driving force, he believes, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a defense minister and is responsible for the administration of the West Bank.

Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, who served in the Israeli army for six years said that many IDF units, especially infantry, are now dominated by right-wing settlers. (AFP)

Leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Smotrich is himself a settler, who, in the words of a profile in The Times of Israel, “has long been a vociferous supporter of West Bank settlements and just as strongly opposes Palestinian statehood, subscribing to the view that Jews have a right to the whole land of Israel.”

The support of Israeli ministers for the settlers goes beyond mere words. Last year, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave more than 120,000 firearms to settlers. More recently, Smotrich and Orit Strock, the settlements and national missions minister, gifted 21 ATVs to illegal farms and outposts in the South Hebron hills, to be used “for security purposes.”

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a US-registered non-profit that collects data on conflict and protest around the world, says its findings support the anecdotal evidence that violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is escalating.

“It is not always clear who is responsible,” Ameneh Mehvar, ACLED’s senior Middle East analyst, told Arab News.

“Is it always settlers, or soldiers, security squads, regional defense battalions? There is a blurring of lines. But we have definitely seen problematic behavior by soldiers in the past few weeks.”

Palestinians inspect the damage at a shop on January 21, 2025, after it was burnt in overnight Israeli settler attacks in Jinsafot village east of Qalqiliya in the occupied West Bank. (AFP)

Traditionally, she said, “the IDF’s rules of engagement in the West Bank were different. The policy of the Central Command was to limit violence and maintain the status quo — for practical reasons, as much as anything else, because settlers and Palestinians live side by side.

“But since Oct. 7, things have become much worse. There is a spirit of revenge and the soldiers feel they have the support of the rhetoric of far-right, pro-settler politicians. It isn’t necessarily that senior commanders are ordering more violence, but that junior commanders on the ground are allowing it.

“So what we’re seeing is a mix of this permissible environment, and the redeployment to the West Bank of soldiers from Gaza, coming back from the war there with the mindset that Palestinians are not humans. They use the same rules of engagement — that everyone is dangerous, anything is allowed, shoot first, and ask questions later.”

The pro-settlement parties in Israel, she said, “are no longer fringe actors, but are part of the mainstream in Israeli politics, and their aim is obviously annexation of parts of the West Bank.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s biggest interest is staying in power, and in order to keep his coalition together he has been giving a lot of incentives to the pro-settlement parties and politicians.”

Israeli soldiers fire teargas at Palestinian farmers as they leave their land after they were attacked by Israeli settlers as they farmed in Salem village east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on November 28, 2024. (AFP)

The IDF’s ongoing so-called “Iron Ball” operation in the northern West Bank is taking place against this background. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, the assault on Jenin Camp, which began two months ago, is “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the Second Intifada in the 2000s.”

The UN says that tens of thousands of residents from Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Far’a refugee camps have been displaced, as the IDF has embarked on “systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and homes, aiming to permanently change the character of Palestinian cities and refugee camps at a scale unjustifiable by any purported military or law enforcement aims.”

Although the world’s attention has been focused on Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon, “what is happening in the West Bank is not a sideshow,” said Mehvar.

“Before Oct. 7, settler attacks were already on the rise. But now the West Bank is a powder keg that could explode at any time.”

27 January 2025: The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) urgently calls attention to the rapidly intensifying Israeli violence in the West Bank of Palestine. Following the ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli occupation announced a shift in its military focus and resources to the West Bank. In turn, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) declared plans to escalate the scope and intensity of its operations in the West Bank and redeploy its troops from Gaza, including the “Nahal Brigade.” These moves signal a clear intensification of systemic Israeli efforts to expand control over Palestinian land and dismantle Palestinian society.

The IOF military escalation is explicitly employing the same devastating tactics of war it used in Gaza, as seen in its large-scale invasion of Jenin city and refugee camp. Using airstrikes, missiles, and heavy machinery, the IOF has forcibly displaced over 2,000 families, caused dozens of Palestinian casualties, and deliberately destroyed roads and vital infrastructure. This includes targeting access to Jenin Governmental Hospital, trapping hundreds of civilians and medical staff inside.

This ongoing escalation is part of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at erasing Palestinian existence and imposing a colonial reality on the ground. These actions, including forced displacement, home demolitions, and the targeting of vital infrastructure, constitute crimes against humanity under international law.

Settler Violence and Land Theft

Alongside the IOF’s escalation, Israeli settlers have intensified their violent attacks, openly calling for a “second Nakba” and the complete destruction of Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, modeling the IOF-inflicted devastation in Gaza. Israeli settler violence continues to surge at record levels, with coordinated attacks targeting Palestinian communities and occurring with full impunity and support from the Israeli government.

The West Bank Protection Consortium (WBPC) reports over 2,274 recorded incidents of settler violence, including physical assaults, arson, and property destruction. The scale of land theft in the West Bank has reached historic proportions, leaving thousands of Palestinians displaced, stripped of their livelihoods, and severed from their historical connection to the land in the past year alone.

Israeli land theft in the West Bank persists, with the Israeli occupation stealing more land in 2024 than the previous 20 years combined. Area C, which constitutes the majority of the West Bank and is its historic food basket, faces the gravest threat. WBPC identified 195 communities (58,000 Palestinians) in Area C as being at risk of forced displacement, with 39,000 of these individuals under imminent threat due to escalating settler violence, restricted access to land, and the continued demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure.

WBPC reports that forcible transfer from these 195 communities translates to 18% of Area C, or 11% of the West Bank, at risk of Israeli takeover for settlement expansion. Already, approximately 2,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their lands, which have been confiscated for settlement expansion. Without urgent international intervention, thousands more Palestinians will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Movement Restrictions and Isolation

Palestinians’ movement across the West Bank has been forced to a standstill due to the sudden expansion of checkpoints, roadblocks, and gates. The Colonization Wall and Resistance Commission reports 898 movement obstacles throughout the West Bank, restricting movement and access to basic services, especially for communities in Area C.

Vital roads and village entrances have been sealed, severely disrupting emergency healthcare, education, and livelihoods. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reports delays of hours or outright denial of access to the wounded and the bodies of the dead. This deliberate isolation leaves Palestinian communities trapped, unable to access critical services or sustain their livelihoods. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers continue to move freely and unhindered.

Imminent Annexation and Further Threats

In the coming months, we anticipate that the Israeli occupation will attempt to annex large parts of the West Bank, starting with the annexation of approximately 30% of the territory, particularly in the central and northern Jordan Valley. This move is being encouraged by new U.S. President Donald Trump, whose early messages have incited the displacement of Palestinians.

We also foresee an exacerbation of movement restrictions, creating complete isolation of cities, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank from one another, rendering movement between them nearly impossible and life-threatening for Palestinians. This will force Palestinians to live in isolated enclaves and ghettos, resembling the conditions imposed on Jewish populations during World War II.

Exclusion of Area C from International Funding

Another grave threat is that certain international donors have begun explicitly excluding Area C from their funding, aligning themselves with Israel’s settlement policies and succumbing to its pressures. We must emphasize that the entire agricultural sector in Palestine is rooted in Area C. Any agricultural interventions that exclude this vital region are meaningless and fail to address the heart of the challenges facing Palestinian farmers.

A Call for Urgent Action

The Israeli escalation in the West Bank reflects its coordinated strategy of violence, displacement, and colonization. The international community must act decisively to hold Israel accountable and protect Palestinian lives. States must abide by their legal obligations as determined by the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and United Nations General Assembly, which state that Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank.

UAWC calls for:

Immediate international intervention: Demand the cessation of military operations and settler violence in the West Bank. Accountability measures: Enforce arms and trade embargoes, implement sanctions, and support international legal efforts, including ongoing cases at the International Court of Justice. Support for Palestinian steadfastness and food sovereignty: Provide direct financial and material support to Palestinian communities to counter displacement, destruction, and loss of livelihoods, and rebuild destroyed agricultural lands and infrastructure.

The situation in the West Bank is dire, and we anticipate further Israeli escalation each day. We urge global civil society, governments, and organizations to amplify their solidarity and demand justice for the Palestinian people. The cost of inaction is measured in lives lost, communities destroyed, and an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis.

Republished from UAWC website.

This post is also available in Français.

The Syrian government is divided on whether to accept the U.S. proposal of a peace deal with Israel, Syrian sources told Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

According to the sources, “there is no real consensus on the matter, even among those loyal to [Syrian President Ahmad] al-Sharaa.” Earlier reports said al-Sharaa was seriously considering normalizing relations with Israel.

Al-Sharaa’s inner circle is “calling on the U.S. mediator to consider less drastic options, such as setting up a security arrangement in the border areas and having Israel withdraw from the territory it has entered since December,” the sources said.

In exchange, “Syria will declare that it ceases hostilities with Israel.”

Israel And The Occupied Palestinian Territory 2024

Israel committed genocide in Gaza, including by causing some of the highest known death tolls among children, journalists, and health and humanitarian workers of any recent conflict in the world, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Armed conflict with Lebanon caused civilian deaths and mass displacement. Israel committed the crime of apartheid, including through the forcible transfer and displacement of Palestinians both in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. State-backed violent settlers enjoyed impunity while conscientious objectors were imprisoned. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in militarized arrest raids in the occupied West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians were subjected to arbitrary detention and to ill-treatment, amounting to torture in many cases. The International Court of Justice’s instructions to avert genocide and end illegal occupation were ignored. Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly came under attack.

Background

Israel entrenched its military occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank through the expansion and fortification of military zones, and of settlements in the West Bank. In November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, citing disagreements over indefinite direct Israeli military control of Gaza and recruitment of Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews to the army.

The conflict between Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based armed group, and Israel escalated significantly. On 23 September the Israeli military launched Operation Northern Arrows. On 1 October, Israel began a ground invasion into southern Lebanon. On 27 November, an Israel/Lebanon ceasefire deal was signed.

In April and October, Israeli attacks on Iranian targets killed senior military officers, and Iranian forces launched missiles towards Israel, which killed one Palestinian man in Jericho, a city in the eastern part of the West Bank.

Violations of international humanitarian law

Armed conflict in Gaza

Israel perpetrated the crime of genocide in Gaza by killing Palestinian civilians, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction by causing mass forced displacement, obstructing or denying life-saving aid, and by damaging or destroying life-sustaining infrastructure.

Israeli attacks during the year caused at least 23,000 immediate fatalities, according to the Health Cluster and WHO in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Some 60% of those killed were women, children and older people. The high civilian death toll was a result of direct, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks. On 16 April, 15 civilians on Market Street in Al-Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza, were killed deliberately in an Israeli air strike. They included 10 children playing around a football table. One of the children had previously fled Gaza City with his family to avoid starvation.

OCHA reported that 52,214 Palestinians suffered conflict-related injuries during the year. Based on reports from doctors treating traumatic injuries to the lower limbs, head and spine, the WHO calculated in July that around 25% of those injured in Gaza would have acute and ongoing rehabilitation needs for years.

Some 90% of Gaza’s population were displaced, most of them multiple times. On 6 May, Israel began a large-scale military operation in eastern Rafah that extended to the whole governorate, despite warnings of catastrophic humanitarian consequences and a legally binding order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to refrain from doing so. The operation displaced 1.2 million Palestinians living there, the vast majority of whom were already internally displaced. It also closed and destroyed much of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Following repeated mass “evacuation” orders, on 6 October Israeli forces ordered the displacement of the remaining 300,000 Palestinians from North Gaza governorate. More than 1 million people, half of whom were children, were living in tents during winter, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Five newborn babies died of hypothermia between 24 and 29 December, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Israeli forces attacked hospitals, medical staff and humanitarian workers, killing scores in drone and artillery attacks and air strikes. Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, only 17 were still partly functional at the end of the year, due to Israeli attacks. An Israeli raid on Kamal Adwan hospital on 27 December put the last major health facility in North Gaza out of service, while its director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was arbitrarily detained along with 240 other personnel and patients.

All humanitarian organizations reported excessive Israeli restrictions and delays on approvals of aid transfers. For example, Médecins Sans Frontières said in December that negotiating the import of essential refrigeration for medical items took five months, and that sterilization equipment was blocked at the border. As a result of the Israeli military siege, 96% of Gaza’s 1 million children were malnourished, and some 60,000 children under the age of five suffered acute malnutrition by the end of the year. Nearly 2 million people faced critical to catastrophic food insecurity, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). At least 34 people died of starvation between April and June, according to UN reports.

On 28 October the Knesset passed a law prohibiting contact between Israeli officials, such as those managing aid transfer approvals, and UNRWA, the main agency providing aid, education and health services. The law prohibited UNRWA from operating in East Jerusalem and Israel and closed the organization’s headquarters.

Israeli soldiers carried out wanton destruction without imperative military necessity. Areas particularly affected included the eastern perimeter, amounting to 16% of Gaza and particularly its productive agricultural land, and the towns of Khuza’a in the south and Shuja’iya in the north.

The conflict reduced Gaza’s water supply to less than 5 litres a day per person throughout the year. Oxfam reported in July that severe water shortages were caused by systematic destruction of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure. All sewage treatment facilities had been destroyed by the end of June and heavy machinery was broken at southern Gaza’s main landfill site. The WHO reported that 727,909 people, particularly children, had been affected by water- and sanitation-related diseases such as hepatitis A by 28 May.

All of Gaza’s universities and colleges, along with hundreds of mosques and three churches, were damaged or destroyed. Most schools were transformed into shelters for displaced people and in November UNICEF reported that 95% of school buildings had sustained damage.

Armed conflict with Hezbollah

Throughout the year, Hezbollah repeatedly fired unguided rockets into populated civilian areas of Israel, killing and wounding civilians and damaging and destroying civilian homes. Hezbollah attacks killed more than 100 people and displaced an estimated 63,000 residents of northern Israel. In October, after Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon, Amnesty International documented three Hezbollah rocket attacks that killed eight civilians, injured at least 16, and which may constitute war crimes.

Apartheid

Forcible transfer

OCHA reported that in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities demolished 1,763 buildings, permanently displacing some 4,500 Palestinians, the highest figure in one year since 2009.

Israel continued its campaign of destroying Palestinian villages in the West Bank. According to the NGO B’Tselem, the Israeli military administration subjected the populations of six Palestinian villages in the West Bank to forcible transfer by demolishing their homes, and threatened at least 40 more communities, each with several hundred inhabitants, with the same fate. Israeli forces allowed or encouraged settlers to terrorize the inhabitants with impunity and sometimes participated in the violence.

Israel established 43 new settlements in the West Bank in addition to around 330 established in previous years, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-occupation organization. Some 2,400 hectares of land in the West Bank were declared Israeli state land, the largest confiscation of territory in the OPT since 1992.

Within Israel, the Ministry of National Security announced in November that there had been a 400% increase in demolitions of Bedouin homes in the Negev/Naqab region in southern Israel since the start of the year, compared to the number of demolitions in 2022. On 8 May, 300 Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel were made homeless when the authorities demolished their village, Wadi al-Khalil, without proper consultation. On 3 June, 500 Bedouin of Ras Jrabah village were ordered by a district court to demolish their own homes and move to a government-approved unfinished township under a separate, Bedouin-only authority. On 14 November, all remaining infrastructure and the mosque in Umm al-Hiran were demolished by militarized police units. The Israeli authorities said that the demolitions were necessary to make way for new or expanding Jewish communities.

The Deportation of Families of Terrorists Law, passed on 7 November, allowed the removal of Israeli citizenship or Jerusalem residency from family members of detainees alleged to have “supported terrorism” or people who have been convicted of security offences: a form of collective punishment. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), nearly continuously renewed since 2003, continued to put certain categories of Palestinians at risk of statelessness.

Freedom of movement

Some 3,500 children from Gaza with chronic illnesses, who had been scheduled to receive treatment in the West Bank after 7 October 2023, had their permits cancelled. Twenty-two patients from Gaza, including five newborn babies, who had been in Israeli or East Jerusalem hospitals in 2023, were sent back to Gaza following an order issued on 19 June without receiving the medical care for which they had been referred.

OCHA counted 793 roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, obstructing Palestinians’ movement between Palestinian villages and towns, and delaying access by emergency services. Military permission, previously granted twice yearly for accessing privately owned agricultural land, was cancelled entirely, affecting farmers in 105 locations in the West Bank. The Israeli army sealed off large towns and refugee camps in the northern West Bank and placed them under curfew for days during raids. The WHO recorded twice as many incidents of obstruction of medical responders in the West Bank compared to the previous year.

Some 100,000 Palestinian workers in the West Bank had their permits to work in Israel cancelled. New permits were rarely issued.

Unlawful killings

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which investigated cases where journalists were killed in connection with their work, Israeli attacks killed 74 Palestinian journalists in the OPT.

According to OCHA, some 487 Palestinians, including 90 children, were killed during militarized arrest raids in the towns of Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas in the northern West Bank. Israeli authorities did not investigate the apparently unlawful killings.

Settlers killed six Palestinians and injured 356, according to OCHA, mostly in rural localities such as the hills south of Nablus, the South Hebron Hills, and in areas of East Jerusalem and Hebron. State-backed settler violence contributed to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian population.

Arbitrary detention

Israeli forces arrested more than 10,000 Palestinians and subjected Palestinians from Gaza to enforced disappearance or incommunicado detention. According to the NGO Hamoked, some 5,262 Palestinians were held without charge or trial at the end of the year: 3,376 under administrative detention orders and 1,886 under the Unlawful Combatants Law.

In November the defence minister announced that Israel would no longer issue administrative detention orders against Jewish settlers.

At least 10 of 156 Palestinian citizens of Israel arrested in 2023 on vague and overreaching charges of “persistent consumption of terrorist materials” – based on allegations that they had viewed footage from Gaza on social media – remained in pretrial detention in February, according to the NGO Mossawa Centre.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Released detainees and prison staff speaking as whistle-blowers testified to the routine use of severe physical violence, including sexual assault and rape, against Palestinian detainees in all detention facilities. The denial of sufficient food, water, sleep, daylight and medical treatment was systematic. At least 54 Palestinian detainees died in custody, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. Adnan Al-Bursh, a leading orthopaedic surgeon in Gaza, died in Ofer Prison in the West Bank in mid-April without being charged with a criminal offence. Eyewitnesses said he had been severely beaten.

The Military Advocate General opened 44 criminal investigations into deaths in detention and eight into allegations of torture, leading to just one indictment.

The Israeli authorities suspended visits from the ICRC and detainees’ families to Palestinians in Israeli detention, contributing to lack of accountability around the treatment of detainees.

Right to truth, justice and reparation

Israeli authorities failed to independently, effectively and transparently investigate violations of international law committed by Israeli forces, including possible war crimes and genocide in Gaza, and unlawful killings in the West Bank. No independent investigators were allowed into Gaza.

On 26 January, 28 March and 24 May, the ICJ ordered Israel to implement provisional measures to prevent genocide in Gaza. Israeli authorities repeatedly ignored such orders.

On 19 July the ICJ found that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory was illegal under international law.

On 21 November the ICC issued arrest warrants against the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and one Hamas leader for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory continued to be barred from entering Israel and the OPT. It received no response from the Israeli government to 15 requests for information and reported that the Israeli government had told Israeli doctors not to cooperate with its investigation into Palestinian fighters’ war crimes in southern Israel.

Sanctions imposed on individual armed Jewish supremacist settlers and specific settler organizations by France, the UK and the USA at the start of the year did not appear to have deterred further acts of state-backed settler violence or the complicity of Israeli soldiers in the settlers’ attacks.

Women’s and girls’ rights

Pregnant and breastfeeding women were disproportionately affected by the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. According to the IPC, 16,500 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza were acutely malnourished. Women and girls faced diseases due to the destruction of sanitary infrastructure and the majority of health facilities including maternity and neonatal wards.

Domestic and gender-based violence increased both in Israel and in Gaza in the context of mass displacement and armed conflict.

Freedom of expression and assembly

Palestinian citizens of Israel faced arrest and discrimination when they expressed their opposition to the Israeli forces’ attacks on Gaza. Human rights lawyer Ahmad Khalefa was released to house arrest in February after spending 110 days in pretrial detention for organizing anti-war protests in October 2023. The charges against him of “incitement to terrorism” and “identifying with a terrorist organization” were unsubstantiated, according to the NGO Human Rights Defenders Fund.

The Mossawa Centre said in June that it had received some 400 requests for assistance from workers who were dismissed by their Israeli employers, especially the Clalit health provider, for social media posts opposing Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Thousands of Jewish Israelis held demonstrations against the government. They were met with police water cannon, and dozens were arrested. On 2 September the finance minister applied a court injunction to block the Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union, from calling a one-day general strike in support of the protesters. On 22 September, Israeli forces raided and shut Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah, having closed the broadcaster’s offices in Jerusalem months earlier. Israeli authorities continued to ban foreign journalists from entering Gaza, and the Israeli Supreme Court turned down petitions by the Foreign Press Association requesting access.

Conscientious objectors’ rights

Nine Jewish and two Palestinian citizens of Israel were jailed for refusing to serve in the army based on their objections to military occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Two of them, teenagers Tal Mitnick and Itamar Greenberg, were imprisoned for six months.

Right to a healthy environment

In June the UN Environment Programme noted that debris from mass destruction of infrastructure, white phosphorus ordnance and industrial and medical waste was releasing extremely high levels of hazardous substances in Gaza. It estimated that, were bombing to cease immediately, it would take 45 years to clear and recycle the debris and waste.

JERUSALEM — Dozens of armed Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late Wednesday, setting homes ablaze and sparking a confrontation with Palestinian residents that drew in Israeli security forces, according to local Palestinian authorities and the Israel Defense Forces. Three Palestinians were killed in Kafr Malik, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, though it was not immediately clear whether it was the Israeli soldiers or settlers who were responsible for the fatal shots. In the nearby village of Taybeh, vigilantes speaking Hebrew were filmed setting fire to a vehicle earlier Wednesday, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which acquired the video.

CCTV footage verified by The Washington Post showed Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian villages in the West Bank on June 25. (Video: B’Tselem via AP)

The deadly clash in Kafr Malik was the latest instance of armed settlers carrying out violent raids against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, often with impunity in the presence of Israeli soldiers or directly with their help. Internal Israeli military data showed that crimes committed by soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank during the first two months of 2025 surged 30 percent compared with a year earlier, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported in March, citing Israeli security officials who were concerned by the uptick.

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The IDF said in a statement that its soldiers were dispatched to quell a confrontation between settlers and Palestinians but were attacked by rocks and “fire” from “terrorists” inside the village. Troops “opened fire toward the source of fire and the rock-hurlers” and later found that several people were injured and killed, the IDF said, adding that soldiers arrested five Israelis and turned them over to the Israeli police.

Kafr Malik’s mayor, Najeh Daoud, told The Washington Post that settlers carrying M-16 rifles and molotov cocktails arrived around 7 p.m. local time and burned four cars. When they tried to approach homes to set them ablaze, they were surrounded by local Palestinians, he said. Soon after that, the IDF arrived and fired tear gas to disperse the clashing crowds, Daoud said.

“Then, the soldiers started shooting live ammunition at the residents, who were civilians who came to stop the fire and to defend their village with rocks and sticks,” said Daoud, who disputed the IDF’s claim that Palestinians fired guns at soldiers and accused the IDF soldiers of killing the three people.

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A series of videos verified by the Associated Press show some of the violence in Kafr Malik late Wednesday, including one that shows a house on fire in the village while men are seen running away and gunfire can be heard in the distance. In another, a car is engulfed in flames, and a man tries to pour water on the fire. What sounds like a single gunshot is captured in the footage, followed by screams.

A third video recorded on Thursday shows damaged property, including charred vehicles and a house.

The five Israelis who were arrested were released Thursday morning after being cleared of any suspicion, Israeli media reported, citing the police. A spokesman for the Israeli police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The law enforcement agency, which is led by Israel’s far-right minister of national security and settler leader Itamar Ben Gvir, has jurisdiction over settlers living in the West Bank, while the IDF is responsible for overall public safety in the occupied territory.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said that apart from the three killed, seven others were injured by bullets from settlers and “Israeli occupation forces,” reported WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency.

Palestinian officials condemned the incident.

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“The orgy and violence of settlers under the protection of the occupation army is a political decision by the Israeli government implemented by the settlers,” Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh said.

Violence has rocked the West Bank since Oct 7. 2023, when Hamas and its Palestinian supporters in Gaza poured into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 Israeli civilians and taking 251 hostages.

The clash that killed three in Kafr Malik on Wednesday evening came days after residents accused the IDF of fatally shooting Moataz Aamar Hamayel, a 13-year-old boy from the same village. In response to a question about Hamayel’s death, the IDF said that “terrorists” threw stones at passing cars and soldiers, who acted “in accordance with the rules of engagement and responded with fire to remove the imminent threat.” The incident is under examination, the IDF said.

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On Tuesday night, settlers also set Palestinian homes on fire in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, according to the Israeli human rights group Standing Together.

From Oct. 7, 2023, until Wednesday night, Israeli forces have killed at least 918 Palestinians in the West Bank, including at least 193 minors, according to B’Tselem. At least 24 more Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers or Israelis of unclear affiliation, the group said.