Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians continue across various areas of the West Bank, escalating sharply and unprecedentedly with the support or complicity of the occupation forces. Although these attacks primarily target Palestinians in Area C, they have also extensively reached other parts of the West Bank.

Palestinian Human Rights Organizations had raised the alarm, issuing warnings about the escalating settler attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters in two separate statements released on October 14 and October 21, 2025. The escalation of these attacks—evident in their growing number, wider geographic scope, and increased brutality—which has resulted in more violent and destructive assaults targeting Palestinian homes, livestock, and civilians’ physical safety, reaching life-threatening levels. For example, in the village of Abu Falah, at around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 8, 2025, settlers attacked a house in the northeastern part of the village and set it afire. The parents and their four children suffered from suffocation injuries but miraculously survived after residents, together with the Palestinian Civil Defense team, managed to extinguish the fire, which had destroyed parts of the house and surrounding property. Later that morning, occupation soldiers raided the home and opened fire on the citizens gathered nearby.

The towns of Beita and Burin in the south of Nablus witnessed a large, simultaneous assault on the same day, involving approximately 30 settlers. Their attack targeted not only citizens and olive harvesters but also journalists, foreign solidarity activists (including Israelis), and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances teams. The Red Crescent reported that 14 injured individuals were transported to hospitals for medical treatment.

In the same context, on Saturday, November 8, 2025, groups of settlers carried out coordinated assaults against Palestinian farmers in different areas throughout the West Bank. The attacks targeted several locations, including Raba south of Jenin, Ein Al-Duyuk near Jericho, Sa’eer east of Hebron, Turmus’ayya and Deir Jarir north and east of Ramallah, Beit Dajan and Aqraba near Nablus, the archaeological site of Tal Ma’in east of Yatta, the Al-Shalal Bedouin community north of Jericho, and the Ar‘ara community near Jerusalem.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday, October 26, citing Israeli police statistics, that 427 complaints of settler violence were filed during the first half of 2025, compared to 680 complaints for the entire year of 2024. While 308 complaints were investigated in 2024, only 133 were investigated in 2025. Most of the assaults were recorded as being committed by “unknown perpetrators,” despite taking place in the presence of occupation soldiers. These attacks have resulted in the displacement of nearly 60 Bedouin and pastoral communities, totaling around 3,000 Palestinians, who formerly lived east of the Allon Road overlooking the Jordan Valley, an area where 11 armed pastoral outposts, equipped with weapons, 4x4 vehicles, and surveillance systems, are stationed.

In this context, Attorney Hidi Raghev, Director of the Movement for Freedom of Information, stated: “These figures confirm the Israeli police’s inaction in addressing crimes of nationalist violence.” He added, “The rise in complaints alongside the drop in indictments reveals, more than anything, how the police operate under Ben Gvir’s leadership and their lack of will to combat Jewish terrorism.” Raghev also noted, “Beyond the professional failure in handling criminal cases, there seems to be a growing and dangerous moral failure within the police.”

Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) asserts that the occupation police’s practice of recording settler attacks as committed by “unknown persons,” combined with the obstacles faced by Palestinian victims in filing complaints, amounts to a policy of impunity. This approach encourages further attacks and discourages Palestinians from reporting incidents, a reality reflected in the statistics of other monitoring organizations, which show far higher numbers than those reported by the Israeli police. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission recorded 766 settler attacks in October 2025 alone, with the majority concentrated in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate (195 attacks), Nablus (179 attacks), and Hebron (126 attacks). Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented 264 settler attacks in October 2025, resulting in casualties or property damage—the highest monthly figure recorded since OCHA began tracking such attacks nearly two decades ago.

Violent settlement activities constitute a clear violation of the occupying power’s obligation under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population and their property. The destruction of property and infrastructure, along with the forced displacement of populations, breaches the rules for the protection of civilians in armed conflict, including the principles codified in the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In extreme cases, such actions may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, particularly given that settler violence has increasingly been used as a tool of demographic engineering in Area C, which is under full Israeli control. This imposes a legal duty on the occupying power to ensure the protection of civilians under occupation—a duty that is systematically neglected. Indeed, the current Israeli Minister of Defense, Yisrael Katz, reportedly issued a policy decision upon assuming office, not to detain settlers involved in acts of terrorism against Palestinians.

The deterioration in access to land, services, and resources due to violence and violations severely threatens the rights of Palestinians to housing, work, and sustainable development, and weakens their resilience and connection to their land.

Therefore, we, the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), while declaring our clear and renewed condemnation of such practices, demand the following:

• The immediate cessation of all settler terrorism and the full protection of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, particularly during olive harvests and in areas under persistent threat, under united for peace measures.
• The complete disarmament of settlers, rigorous prosecution for their crimes against Palestinians, and the formal designation of their organizations as terrorist entities.
• Guaranteeing unrestricted access for media crews, human rights organizations, and humanitarian relief organizations to the affected areas to document the impact and provide urgent assistance.
• That the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions ensure that the occupying power upholds its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians in occupied territories, including full adherence to the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion of July 2024, which reaffirmed that Israel must terminate its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory without delay, and to the United Nations General Assembly resolution of September 2024, which called for the enforcement of this obligation by September 2025
• Supporting the resilience of the affected Palestinian communities through relief programs, rehabilitation, and compensation for damages—including the destruction of trees, properties, and the deprivation of livelihoods.
• The formation of protection committees and establishing an early warning system to empower citizens to protect themselves.