Briefing on UN Human Rights High Commissioner's report on Israeli settlements Remarks by Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights - Palestine

Since the end of the period covered by this report, the pace of the concerted efforts by the Israeli government to seize as much Palestinian land as possible, with as few Palestinians in it as possible, is only becoming more relentless. To this end, Palestinians are pushed out of their homes and off their lands every day, to make room for more expansion of illegal settlements.

Israeli senior officials’ statements point to a policy to thwart Palestinian statehood and to do maximum, irreversible damage to Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Today, I will brief you on just a few trends that continued to intensify after the period covered by the report.

First, an enabling policy and legislative environment continues to facilitate settlement expansion. In February 2026, the Israeli cabinet adopted decisions that will further extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, allow more Israeli land seizures, and allow settlers to purchase land from Palestinians in an environment where such transactions cannot be considered voluntary.

Second, Palestinians live with even more violence, restrictions and discrimination than they did just four months ago at the end of the reporting period.

Since the beginning of 2026, Israeli settlers have killed seven Palestinians across the West Bank — a significantly increased rate compared to the eight Palestinians killed by settlers in all of 2025.

Since the start of the conflict in the region on 28 February, the situation has become worse. Israeli security forces have continued to kill Palestinians with impunity, including a killing of a 17-year-old this morning, and an incident last Sunday when they opened fire on a car in Tubas and killed two parents with their two sons aged five and six.

In the same timeframe, Israeli security forces have also launched daily raids across the West Bank, seized dozens of Palestinian homes for several hours or several days to use as interrogation centres, and detained at least 200 Palestinians including for social media posts labelled as “incitement” or “glorification of the enemy”.

Israeli authorities have tightened the already heavy, discriminatory closures and movement restrictions across the West Bank, tearing communities apart and impeding Palestinians’ access to healthcare, livelihoods, education, and basic services.

Yet, Israeli settlers are roaming free with complete impunity, often armed, forcing Palestinian family after Palestinian family off their lands. As a result, at least nine Palestinian communities have been fully or partially displaced since 28 February, mostly in the northern Jordan Valley.

Over the weekend, we received harrowing accounts from the residents of one of the last standing communities there, Khirbet Humsa. According to our monitoring, dozens of settlers attacked the community and assaulted Palestinian men and women in front of their children, stole livestock, and apparently sexually assaulted a young man in a horrifying way.

This violence is clearing Palestinians from the area while a new separation barrier is being constructed that will close this part of the northern Jordan Valley to Palestinians entirely.

Third, settlement expansion is also accelerating.

Last December, Israeli authorities approved 19 new settlements. This includes settlements in the northern West Bank where, last year, Israeli security forces had expelled at least 32,000 Palestinians who remain displaced to this day.

In January 2026, Israeli authorities issued tenders for the construction of thousands of settlement units in the so-called E1 area. This expansion will likely sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and disrupt territorial continuity in the West Bank between north and south.

Before I close, I want to stress that Palestinians in Gaza are also still living under conditions of precarity and dehumanization, even five months after the ceasefire.

671 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military operations since this ceasefire, both in the vicinity of Israeli forces’ deployment lines, and far away in homes, tents, and on the streets. Thousands remain missing, buried under rubble or forcibly disappeared. The entry and flow of humanitarian aid is not reliable as quantities change, many essential goods are still blocked, and crossings are not dependably open.

The events of the past two and a half years in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have not only caused one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our lifetimes but also presented a severe human rights crisis, with the risk of further reverberations across the region and the world. This is a time to strengthen respect for human rights and humanitarian law. Ending the disturbing trends of violations, occupation and impunity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a good place to start.