West Bank settler violence surges as Palestinians face rising displacement

On 27 March 2026, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counted more Palestinians displaced by settler violence in the West Bank in the first months of 2026 than in all of 2025.

Attacks on Palestinian communities sharpened after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. By August 2025, violence had spread across villages, farms, mosques, cars and agricultural land, and Palestinians in places such as al-Mughayyir and Tal faced repeated assaults and displacement. Israeli military raids added to the pressure, with thousands of Palestinians forced from their homes in the months that followed.

On 31 January 2025, OCHA recorded 555 Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank since 1 January 2024, including 102 children, alongside 27 Israeli fatalities, including 3 children and 15 members of Israeli forces. OCHA said 544 of the Palestinian deaths were caused by Israeli forces, 5 by Israeli settlers and 6 by Israeli forces or settlers. A Reuters tally in August 2024 put the number at 589 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 7 October 2023, at least 570 by Israeli forces and at least 11 by settlers. By 20 December 2025, UNRWA counted 1,043 Palestinians, including at least 229 children, killed in the occupied West Bank since the war began.

On 14 August 2025, the European Union said the Israeli government continued to deepen the settlement project in the occupied Palestinian territory, advancing plans that endangered Palestinian development and territorial contiguity and further weakened prospects for a two-state solution. Rights groups have accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government of turning a blind eye to settler attacks, and B’Tselem has said Israeli authorities aid and abet settler violence rather than prevent it. The Israeli government says its actions are legitimate security measures against Palestinian terrorism.

Kafr Qaddum, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Qalandia Camp have all seen repeated assaults as settlements and outposts spread deeper into the West Bank.