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'State-Backed Terrorism': Israeli Settler Attacks on West Bank Palestinians Hit Record High
"The systematic escalation forms part of a broader effort to consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank by depopulating it and expanding the territorial and operational influence of settlements," said one group.
Nov 11, 2025
Palestine defenders this week decried the ongoing surge in attacks by Israeli settler-colonists on Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, which the United Nations humanitarian office says are occurring at the highest rate it has ever seen.
Israeli settlers seeking to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands in order to steal them have ramped up violent attacks on local residents including olive farmers, as well as their trees and equipment, during the crucial harvesting season. Journalists who document the assaults and international activists trying to protect locals from the rampaging assailants have also been attacked.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday that "October 2025 recorded the highest monthly number of Israeli settler attacks since OCHA began documenting such incidents in 2006, with more than 260 attacks resulting in casualties, property damage, or both—an average of eight incidents per day."
"Settler violence during this olive harvest season has reached the highest level recorded in recent years, with about 150 attacks documented so far, resulting in the injury of more than 140 Palestinians and the vandalism of over 4,200 trees and saplings across 77 villages," OCHA added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has documented 704 settler attacks this year through October, up from 675 in all of 2024. Israel's military says that police and Shin Bet—the internal state security agency—have failed to address this violence due to pressure from members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, right-wing lawmakers, and religious leaders who believe that Israel has a divinely ordained right to steal all of Palestine.
However, Israeli and international human rights groups have long documented IDF participation or complicity in settler attacks.
On Tuesday, at least dozens of masked settlers launched a sweeping assault around the village of Beit Lid east of Tulkarm, setting fire to farmland, vehicles, and the al-Junaidi dairy factory.
The settlers reportedly wounded at least four Palestinians, attacked IDF soldiers, and damaged an army vehicle. Israeli police said they arrested four Israelis who allegedly took part in the raid.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported additional settler attacks Tuesday targeting a Bedouin community and the nearby village of Deir Sharaf, east of Beit Lid. Videos show residents trying to extinguish fires set by the attackers. Eyewitnesses told reporters that IDF troops prevented emergency responders from helping to put out the fires.
Over the weekend, dozens of masked settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters, activists, and journalists, injuring more than 10 people including Reuters photographer Raneen Sawafta—who was severely beaten—people who tried to help her, a Palestinian medic, an IDF reservist, and local farmers.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) said it was "appalled" by the surge in settler attacks.
"Journalists, both local and foreign, have proven to be a clear target as they document an unprecedented level of unchecked violence against Palestinians during this year's olive harvest," FPA said. "Israeli forces routinely harass and intimidate journalists, in some cases detaining them and threatening them with deportation. This is all part of a deepening climate of hostility toward the media by Israeli authorities."
Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan said Tuesday on social media: "Israeli settler terrorism in the West Bank is state-backed terrorism. Armed, funded, and protected by the Israeli government and army. The world must stop watching in silence. Sanction the Israeli government that enables and sponsors the settler terrorism."
Mohammed Hijaz, a West Bank olive farmer, told NPR Monday: "We want to live in peace. We don't want this war, and we want to be able to get to our land, and to have a better life than what we have right now."
Settler violence has surged as the world's attention was focused on Israel's genocidal assault and siege on Gaza, which has left more than 249,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
During that period, OCHA says Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including at least 213 children and 20 women—among them a 78-year-old who died after being denied medical care for a heart attack suffered during an IDF raid northwest of Ramallah last week.
The Trump administration—which supports Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover—has lifted limited sanctions imposed during the tenure of former President Joe Biden against the most extreme settlers, some of whom have been slapped with sanctions by other countries.
This, even as President Donald Trump and his administration publicly oppose Israeli moves to steal and colonize more and more of the West Bank, which has been under illegal occupation since 1967.
"The systematic escalation forms part of a broader effort to consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank by depopulating it and expanding the territorial and operational influence of settlements," the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement Sunday.
"This includes turning settlers into practical extensions of the army in attacks and land seizure operations, while imposing new patterns of field control that entrench separation and isolation between Palestinian communities, undermining any possibility of establishing a contiguous or independent Palestinian entity," the group added.
In a recent interview with ITV News' Peter Smith, Daniella Weiss, an extremist settler leader who advocates the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from not only the West Bank but also Gaza, denied that Israelis are attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss tries to claim that "there is no settler violence" against Palestinians.
In response, ITV News' Peter Smith pulls out his phone and plays a video of a recent attack on a grandmother in the West Bank.
Watch her reaction: pic.twitter.com/2o2FWCDQOu
— Decensored News (@decensorednews) November 1, 2025
When asked by Smith who supports plans by Israel's far-right to annex the West Bank given their illegality under international law and even opposition from the Trump administration, Weiss—who is under British and Canadian sanctions—replied, "Our sovereignty's here anyway, 'cause we got it from God."
Asked if her understanding of "God's plan" includes divine endorsement of violence to force Palestinians from their lands, Weiss rejected the premise of the question and refused to view footage of settlers attacking an elderly Palestinian woman.
"There is violence against settlers," she insisted, "there is no settler violence."
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Israel Bombs Yemen as IDF Rolls Through Gaza City, Displacing Hundreds of Thousands
Dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, including many women and children, as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City.
Sep 25, 2025
Israeli forces on Thursday resumed airstrikes on Yemen—whose Houthi rebels have been launching strikes targeting Israel in solidarity with Palestine—while pushing deeper into Gaza City, killing dozens of Palestinians, displacing hundreds of thousands of others, and trapping up to 1 million more.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said dozens of warplanes and air support units pounded alleged "command headquarters of the Houthi General Staff” and other buildings used by members of the rebel army also known as Ansar Allah.
Thursday's strikes followed last week's IDF bombing of a media complex in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that killed 31 journalists and four other people including a child in what the Committee to Protect Journalists called the world's deadliest single attack on media workers in 16 years.
This, after an IDF airstrike last month assassinated Houthi officials including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi. US forces—which have been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror—have also carried out airstrikes in Yemen that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
The Israeli and US strikes came in retaliation for Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping. The Houthis and Iran have been the only actors in the world that have answered Israel's genocidal war on Gaza with military force.
The latest Israeli bombing of Yemen came as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, an offensive aimed at conquering, occupying, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the embattled coastal exclave.
Gaza officials said dozens of Palestinians have been killed since dawn Thursday, including 25 aid-seekers. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that "intensified strikes on Gaza City, including on tents, residential buildings, [and] infrastructure continue to inflict heavy casualties."
The relentless Israeli airstrikes that hit multiple areas across Gaza City today; forcing thousands of Palestinian families to flee their homes into overcrowded and unsafe areas with no shelter, food, or medical care. pic.twitter.com/5Oj9VqtDFY
— Daniella Modos - Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) September 25, 2025
Among the victims of Thursday's IDF strikes were at least 10 children and three women killed when the houses and tents in which they were sheltering were bombed, according to The Associated Press.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said Thursday that Palestinian children are being “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, [and] seeking medical care."
“They’ve been bombed, maimed, starved, burned alive, buried in the rubble of their homes, separated from their parents... scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anesthetic,” Fletcher added.
More than 300,000 Palestinians have fled for their lives amid Israel's onslaught and engineered famine, while as many as 1 million others remain trapped in Gaza.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—although experts caution that the actual death toll is likely much higher. More than 167,100 others have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where the International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
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'Assault on Children': UNRWA Condemns Israeli Raids on East Jerusalem Schools
"Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
May 08, 2025
Israeli occupation forces enforced a ban on the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday by storming three schools in East Jerusalem, terrorizing children and staff as they shuttered the facilities and drawing condemnation from human rights defenders.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, heavily armed Israeli security forces raided the schools in the Shu'fat refugee camp in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, detaining one UNRWA employee and forcing around 550 children out of their classrooms as the invaders closed the facilities.
"As a result, UNRWA was forced to evacuate all children across the six schools it runs in East Jerusalem," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said. "Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
"Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law," Lazzarini added. "These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations. By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn. UNRWA schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children."
The International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a genocide case against Israel over the U.S.-backed Gaza onslaught—is considering whether the Israeli government's ban on UNRWA violates international law.
Hundreds of UNRWA staffers and their relatives have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. Israel has bombed many UNRWA schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, including a Tuesday "double-tap" airstrike on school in the al-Bureij refugee camp that killed at least 30 of the more than 2,000 people sheltering there.
UNRWA officials also accuse Israeli forces of torturing kidnapped agency workers in a bid to elicit false confessions that they took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. UNRWA and much of the international community have condemned such allegations as baseless.
In the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, Israeli forces launched Operation Iron Wall in January. Israel says the invasion is targeting resistance fighters largely based in West Bank refugee camps. However, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced by the offensive, which has killed numerous civilians.
According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 900 Palestinians including nearly 200 children have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023. Attacks by Israeli settler-colonists, sometimes aided by Israeli troops, have also killed, wounded, displaced, and terrorized West Bank residents as Israel's far-right government forges ahead with plans to steal more land from Palestinians, ethnically cleanse them, and open the door to further Israeli colonization.
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