Settler encroachments and attacks on Palestinian homes are beyond a boiling point

Israeli authorities must immediately remove settlers who are violently displacing thousands of Palestinians, unlawfully grabbing Palestinian land and expanding settlements.

Since the establishment of an Israeli settler outpost near Qusra, a Palestinian town located in Nablus Governorate in Area B of the occupied West Bank in November 2025, Israeli settlers have reportedly taken control of the area west of the town, located in Area B. During this time, Palestinians living in Qusra have endured increasingly frequent attacks by settlers, including home invasions, physical assaults, acts of vandalism, theft and arson, including against a local mosque.

In an emblematic case of settler violence, in July, Israeli settlers from an outpost located in the Ras al Ein area of Qusra cut the water and electricity supply to three Palestinian homes located nearby. Then, on 9 August, the settlers closed all the gates and entrances leading to these Palestinian homes and set up a tent between the houses, refusing to allow anyone to enter or leave the area. This has resulted in three Palestinian households, comprising some 15 people including at least two children, being trapped inside their homes in a state of terror, unable to attend to their basic needs and without access to water or electricity.

The families reported that they requested Israeli security forces present at the site to intervene, but to no avail. Instead, Israeli security forces seem to have blocked medics, solidarity activists and journalists from reaching the families. In a sign that could indicate collusion between the ISF and settlers, video footage shows soldiers praying together with settlers at the location. On 12 August, soldiers eventually dismantled the settlers’ tent without removing the settlers who, as of 13 August, are still surrounding the homes.

These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families, and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and land. Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced.

The International Court of Justice is clear that all Israeli settlements are illegal and that Israel is obligated to cease all settlement activities, evacuate all settlers, including those terrorizing Qusra and Jalud, and bring to an end its unlawful presence in the West Bank. In the meantime, Israel must comply with its obligations under the laws of occupation to ensure the security of the local Palestinian population, which includes preventing attacks by Israeli settlers unlawfully present in the occupied West Bank, investigating such attacks and ensuring accountability of those found responsible for conducting, supporting or tolerating these attacks, including through the imposition of sentences commensurate to the abuses and violations.

UN Human Rights - Palestine concerned over Israel’s ill-treatment, violence and confiscation of belongings from Gaza returnees 

UN Human Rights - Palestine is concerned about the increasing number of reports by Palestinians returning to Gaza that they have been subjected to physical violence, threats, degrading treatment, and intrusive searches by Israeli soldiers, as well as other armed individuals acting under the authority of Israel, at Kerem Abu Salem crossing point, and previously at Rafah crossing point. There are also widespread reports of the confiscation of medicines, medical supplies, identity documents, educational certificates, money, and other personal belongings, with no process for their recovery.  

Between 7 July and 4 August 2026, hundreds of returnees described prolonged and exhausting journeys. In just one day, in July, 54 of 92 returnees reported that some or all of their personal belongings had been confiscated, including medicines and assistive devices.

In early August, an older man reported that, after objecting to money being missing from his belongings, Israel soldiers beat and handcuffed him, dragged him along the ground, detained him in a small room, and then transferred him to a bus.  

In another instance, there were reports of unnecessary intrusive searches and degrading treatment. Two women returning together reported that they were taken separately into closed areas and subjected to an intrusive body search by a female Israeli soldier, being required to remove their clothes while being filmed by a surveillance camera, after a metal necklace worn by one of them had triggered a security alarm.  

These reports are consistent with concerns documented during earlier crossings, where returnees described verbal abuse, intimidation, interrogations, violent handling and theft from their luggage.

Children face additional vulnerabilities. A four-year-old girl arrived in Gaza alone after her father was prevented from returning to Gaza. Upon her arrival, humanitarian partners had to initiate family tracing to help reunite her with her mother and uncle.  

“These violations we are seeing against Palestinians returning to Gaza are part of a broader pattern of violations and dehumanization, and are discouraging people from returning,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “These are vulnerable people returning to their occupied land that has been devastated by years of Israeli bombardment and starved of life’s basic essentials. And now they are having to endure this on their return? It is simply abhorrent.”    

Palestinian authorities must stop practices of arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemns the Palestinian authorities’ continued use of arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of ill-treatment against Palestinians detained in the West Bank for “security reasons”, including journalists, dissidents, and political activists.

Palestinian authorities continue to arbitrarily or unlawfully deprive dozens of Palestinians of liberty — many are reportedly detained under a law that was declared unconstitutional by the Palestinian Supreme Constitutional Court. UN Human Rights – OPT has also gathered information on several male prisoners, including children, who continued to be detained by Palestinian security forces despite courts having ordered their release.

Some detainees in Palestinian detention facilities have reported torture and other forms of ill-treatment, including painful stress positions, severe beatings and whippings, and prolonged solitary confinement. Detainees who reported torture and ill-treatment frequently referred to experiencing suspension in a position known in Arabic as “shabeh”, where their hands are shackled behind their backs, and they are suspended from the ceiling by their wrists for days at a time.

Over the years, the Palestinian authorities have worked closely with our Office and made some advancements, including legal reforms and increased engagement with the UN Committee Against Torture. However, much more needs to be done to guarantee the rights and dignity of Palestinian detainees.

The Palestinian authorities must immediately stop all forms of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees and all arbitrary or unlawful detention. Those deprived of liberty must be treated with humanity and respect for their dignity. Among others, they must be provided with regular outdoor access, sufficient living space to prevent overcrowding, and adequate food, medical care, clothing, and sanitation facilities and hygiene conditions. They must also be entitled to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court.

Palestinian authorities must also conduct prompt, thorough, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees and hold perpetrators to account.

To prevent recurrence, we call upon the Government of the State of Palestine to operationalize commitments taken within the National Commission against Torture, and under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and establish a National Preventive Mechanism with a mandate to regularly inspect places of detention.

Urgent action needed to protect Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya 
 

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls on the Israeli Government to urgently protect Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and ensure his safety, dignity, and physical integrity. The Israeli Government must immediately release Dr. Abu Safiya, or promptly charge him with a recognizable criminal offence and grant him a fair trial. In the meantime, he must be urgently transferred to a civilian hospital to ensure that he receives life-saving medical care.

Dr. Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been held in Israeli custody since December 2024 under Israel's Unlawful Combatant Law, without charge or trial. He was arrested at the hospital after refusing to evacuate while treating critical patients.

According to his lawyers, Dr. Abu Safiya appears to be at imminent risk of death. Information available to UN Human Rights - OPT indicates he has been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement, repeated severe assaults resulting in grave injuries, and denial of medical care.

His case raises serious concerns under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, including the prohibition of torture, the right to liberty and security, the right to be brought to justice in a process respecting fair trial guarantees, and the protections afforded to medical personnel during armed conflict.

Despite several appeals to Israeli courts challenging the legality of Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention, the courts have so far failed to protect his rights under international law, compounding concerns about the effectiveness of the Israeli judicial safeguards and remedies in relation to Palestinian detainees. Dr. Abu Safiya’s lawyers also stated that he was assaulted in detention in retribution for these legal actions.

Thirteen other senior doctors remain in Israeli detention without charge. Around 9,300 Palestinians are currently in Israeli custody, including thousands held arbitrarily without charge or trial. UN Human Rights OPT documentation indicates that torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees is widespread and systematic. At least 91 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention since 7 October 2023, including several dying due to torture and ill-treatment, according to credible information.

Israel must ensure that its laws governing the detention of Palestinians living under occupation comply with international legal norms and standards, including the prohibition of arbitrary detention and fair trial guarantees, and that its detention officials abide by those standards. All arbitrarily detained Palestinians must be released with immediate effect.

The Israeli Government must immediately and urgently end all forms of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian detainees. We urge Israel to grant independent medical experts, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and human rights monitors unhindered access to places of detention.

Summary execution continues a pattern of unlawful killings in Gaza

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemns the killing of a Palestinian man accused of collaborating with Israeli forces by a group affiliated with Hamas on Wednesday, 1 July 2026. According to a statement by a group which self-identifies as the “Resistance Security”, the man was executed “after exhausting all revolutionary procedures”, raising concerns that the killing amounts to summary and extrajudicial execution.

This recent execution continues a pattern of unlawful killings by de facto authorities in Gaza and units in pro-Hamas security forces of dozens of Palestinians since the announcement of a ceasefire in October 2025, mostly in the first month. The killings largely targeted Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israeli forces, or of working with armed elements that are apparently funded, armed, and backed by Israel.

UN Human Rights – OPT is also concerned about reports of ill-treatment and torture by members of these armed units or individuals affiliated with Hamas. This included abuses against Palestinians allegedly collaborating with the Israeli forces, as well as others suspected of criminal activity. Several Palestinians in Gaza also publicly reported receiving threats by armed men affiliated with Hamas ahead of protests that were planned on 26 June 2026 against Hamas.

The climate of fear and intimidation is compounding an already catastrophic situation in which Israeli forces have continued attacks that have so far killed more than 1,000 Palestinians since the ceasefire announcement in October 2025. Israeli forces also continue to apparently target members of the de facto police personnel, consistent with a pattern of dismantling law enforcement and administrative governance in Gaza. This appears to amount to a pattern of attacks on civilians, and has deepened the sense of chaos and lawlessness at a time when Israeli forces also continue to push westward, squeezing Palestinians into a fraction of the strip and displacing even more Palestinians from their homes and tents every day.

Unlawful killings, torture, and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitute war crimes and grave violations of international human rights law. De facto authorities in Gaza are bound by human rights obligations and restrictions on the conduct of law enforcement, as well as the applicable rules of international humanitarian law. They must put in place measures to prevent human rights violations by members of their security forces or individuals affiliated with them, investigate all reports of unlawful killings, torture, and ill-treatment, and hold perpetrators accountable.

Surviving childhood under occupation - The catastrophic harm facing Palestinian children

Israeli violence is subjecting Palestinian children to catastrophic levels of harm: killed, maimed, displaced, and living in perpetual insecurity.

On Saturday, 6 June 2026, Israeli security forces shot and killed 7-month-old Sam Fahed Abu Haykal in his parents’ car near a Hebron checkpoint. The bullet appears to have passed through Sam’s head and injured both his parents. Video footage analysed by an Israeli human rights organisation shows a member of the Israeli security forces shooting at the car as it was slowing down, posing no threat, and clearly indicates that he provided no aid to the family afterwards.

Sam is one of 241 children killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023, as verified by the UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OHCHR OPT). This is in addition to over 21,000 children who have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza in the same period, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with killings continuing after the announcement of a ceasefire in October 2025.

Since the ceasefire announcement, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has reported the killing of 981 Palestinians in Israeli attacks in Gaza. OHCHR OPT has so far verified the killing of 574 Palestinians during this period, including 183 children, five of whom were infants under the age of one.

On 4 February 2026, Israeli forces opened fire on an encampment for displaced people in Al Tuffah, Gaza City, killing five Palestinians, including two women and two baby girls: 5-month-old Mira Al Khabbaz and Watein Al Khabbaz, born less than a week before.

Forty-eight of the 183 verified child fatalities after the ceasefire announcement were victims of incidents in which only children were killed, raising concerns about Israeli forces directly targeting Palestinian children. Fifteen women have also been killed in incidents in which only women, or only women and children, were killed.

On 29 October 2025, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent housing displaced people in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, and killed three Palestinians: two brothers aged eight and 11, and their 15-year-old sister. On 31 January 2026, an Israeli strike hit a residential building in western Gaza City, killing two women aged 60 and 23, and three sisters aged five, seven and nine. On 2 February 2026, Israeli Naval Forces killed one Palestinian, a 2-year-old boy, in his tent on the coast of Al Mawasi, Khan Younis.

In the West Bank, the 241 verified child fatalities represent nearly one in five of the 1,103 Palestinian victims killed by Israeli security forces and settlers since 7 October 2023.

In March 2026, three months before the shooting that killed 7-month-old Sam in Hebron, a similar attack in Tammun, south of Tubas, killed four family members in their car. At the time, Israeli security forces opened fire on a Palestinian vehicle, killing a father, Ali Bani Odeh, a mother, Wa’ad Bani Odeh, and their 5- and 6-year-old sons, Mohammad and Othman. Two children survived the shooting, aged eight and 11, but later reported that they were assaulted by Israeli security forces when they left the car.

Most of the children killed in the West Bank are teenage boys, 213 out of 241. In many cases, subsequent statements by Israeli authorities accuse the children of having engaged in stone-throwing as a justification. In all OHCHR OPT-verified killings of minors involved in confrontations with Israeli security forces, our assessment is that none posed an imminent threat to life —the only legal justification for the use of lethal force in the occupied West Bank under international law. Where less harmful means were available, such lethal force may constitute an arbitrary deprivation of life and, in the context of occupation, may amount to willful killing, a war crime.

On 20 December 2025, a member of Israeli security forces hiding behind a wall shot and killed 16-year-old Rayan Abu Mulla in Qabatiya, south of Jenin, on his way home. An official Israeli statement claimed Rayan was throwing stones. However, according to witnesses and CCTV footage, he was walking empty-handed. Israeli security forces also prevented ambulances from assisting Rayan. They then took his body away and refused to hand it over for burial.

OHCHR OPT’s analysis demonstrates a pattern of Israeli security forces preventing medical assistance to injured Palestinians and withholding bodies, including those of children.

Children are civilians and have special protections under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The routine assault on their right to life, safety, and liberty in the Occupied Palestinian Territory at this massive scale points to war crimes.

“From newborns to teenagers, Palestinian children have not been spared extraordinary levels of Israeli violence. The pattern, at a minimum, shows a dangerous scale of dehumanisation and disregard for Palestinian lives,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “Palestinian children must be able to grow up in safety, with the same rights and protections as children anywhere else in the world. Surviving childhood should never be this difficult.”

UN Human Rights condemns repeated Israeli attacks on police personnel in Gaza

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemns Israeli forces’ routine targeting of police personnel in Gaza in repeated attacks. Since January 2026, UN Human Rights has recorded at least twelve attacks against police, killing at least 53 civilians, including 35 police personnel, 5 boys, and 1 woman. Four attacks were recorded in May alone, killing 12 policemen.

Israeli attacks against police personnel have been reported during ordinary law enforcement operations, including directing traffic and patrolling streets and markets. The pattern demonstrated disregard for civilian lives, including that of police personnel, with several strikes taking place in crowded areas, killing, in addition to police personnel, internally displaced persons, children, and prison inmates.

On 23 May, an Israeli strike struck a police checkpoint in the Al Tawam area, Gaza City, killing at least five police officers and two others, including a boy. On 24 April 2026, an Israeli drone struck a police vehicle carrying out a law enforcement operation in the Beer 19 area of Al Mawasi camp, west of Khan Younis — a crowded encampment of displaced Palestinians. The attack killed four policemen, as well as three other men and a nine-year-old boy from nearby tents. It occurred at the time of sunset prayers, when many Palestinians were moving from their tents to a nearby mosque.

On 31 January 2026, an Israeli airstrike hit Ash Sheikh Radwan Police Station, northwest of Gaza City, killing at least 11 Palestinians, including five police officers, one of them a woman. Six more people, including a boy, were also killed in the airstrike, including inmates and people visiting the station for services.

The pattern of attacks raises concerns that Israeli forces apply no distinction between police personnel and fighters belonging to armed groups in Gaza. However, under international humanitarian law, police personnel are civilians who are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. Attacks targeting police personnel simply for performing ordinary law enforcement and policing functions would amount to war crimes.

The attacks also fit a broader pattern of Israel’s systematic failure to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza. Even in the event that one or several of these attacks targeted fighters, the location and timing of the attacks in crowded areas and the use of weapons with wide-area effects indicate that Israeli forces have failed to take feasible precautions to avoid and minimize incidental loss of civilian life.

“As an occupying power, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure, as far as possible, that Palestinians have public order and safety. Instead, the systematic targeting and dismantling of public governance institutions has created chaos with devastating impact on civilians,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “Nearly eight months have passed since the announcement of a ceasefire, and there is no end in sight for the killings, the turmoil, and the misery.”

Attacks on Gaza over Eid kill 26, as Israeli forces push deeper into the strip

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OHCHR OPT) condemns the increase in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the eve of Eid Al Adha on Tuesday, 26 May. At least 26 Palestinians were killed since Tuesday including six women and seven children as Palestinian families prepared to observe Eid amid displacement, deprivation, and insecurity.

Three airstrikes on 26 May killed 12 Palestinians. In the early morning hours, one more 14-year-old girl died of injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike the day before that also killed a 30-year-old woman and a five-year-old girl according to initial information. Since the announcement of a ceasefire, at least 32 children and eight women have been killed in Israeli attacks in which fatalities were exclusively women and children.

One of the airstrikes on 26 May killed four men in eastern Al Maghazi camp, Middle Gaza, reportedly after they resisted attempts to search their homes by armed gangs allegedly supported by the Israeli military. Another airstrike hit a car in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, killing two men. The third airstrike struck an apartment in Al Rimal, Gaza City, and killed a newly appointed commander of Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades together with his wife, his two sons, aged 15 and 22, his daughter, aged 9, and a woman passerby.

On the first day of Eid Al Adha, 27 May, an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza City reportedly killed at least ten: four girls, one boy, three women, and two men allegedly affiliated with Al Qassam Brigades.

Since the announcement of a ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed 922 Palestinians in attacks across Gaza, bringing the total death toll since 7 October 2023 to nearly 73,000.

OHCHR OPT has consistently warned that Israel’s attacks in Gaza violate international humanitarian law’s principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution in attacks. A recent OHCHR OPT report also concluded that the totality of Israeli conduct in Gaza raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with its obligations to prevent acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention.

The Israeli blockade on Gaza is also still depriving Palestinians of necessities, including adequate shelter, essential medicines, and food items. Almost everyone is displaced and concentrated into less than half the land area of Gaza— hemmed in by Israeli ground forces that continue to move west, displacing families and pushing them into a progressively narrower strip of land. In recent days, multiple displacement orders were issued, forcing people out of their shelters. The Israeli Prime Minister announced yesterday that he had directed Israeli forces to expand their deployment to cover 70 per cent of Gaza. The continued contraction of areas available to civilians raises grave concerns about access to humanitarian assistance, and the ability of displaced families to find any meaningful safety.

“Our concerns about the commission of war crimes in Gaza have not stopped,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “It is difficult enough to navigate life in chronic displacement in the ruins of Gaza, under blockade, and after Israeli attacks virtually destroyed every essential system: healthcare, education, food production, law enforcement and civil order. Continuing military attacks on a population living under these conditions is unthinkable.”

Israel must halt forcible displacement of Khan Al Ahmar and settlement expansion in E1

The Israeli government must immediately cease its measures to forcibly displace the Khan Al Ahmar community in the area known as E1 in the occupied West Bank and stop its settlement expansion plans there.

Situated east of Jerusalem, Khan Al Ahmar is a Bedouin community and home to hundreds of Palestinians. On Tuesday, 19 May, the Israeli Minister of Finance and Additional Minister within the Ministry of Defence, Bezalel Smotrich, directed the Israeli Civil Administration to evict the Khan Al Ahmar community “as soon as possible”. This order puts the community at imminent risk of forcible transfer — a war crime.

Last year, Israeli authorities approved plans for 3,401 settlement units in the E1 area that would connect the Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim to occupied East Jerusalem. The planned construction would replace 18 Palestinian communities, including Khan Al Ahmar, with Israeli settlers. It would further disrupt the territorial continuity of the occupied West Bank, consolidate Israeli annexation, and severely impair a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

Statements by Israeli officials link the settlement project in the E1 area to the thwarting of Palestinian statehood. This includes, in September 2025, the Israeli Prime Minister telling the press during a ceremony related to the E1 settlement project: “There will be no Palestinian state. This place is ours.”

The families of Khan Al Ahmar are mostly refugees, originally displaced from areas inside present-day Israel. For nearly two decades, Israeli authorities have consistently denied the community building permits and then issued orders to demolish their homes on the basis of the absence of such permits. Members of the community have spent years challenging the demolition orders in Israeli courts. Sustained international advocacy efforts have thus far prevented the community’s forcible transfer.

“There is no legal ambiguity about this: Israel’s forcible transfer of Palestinians is unlawful; settlements are unlawful; and Israel must cease all settlement activities, evacuate all settlements, and end its unlawful presence in the Palestinian territory in line with the conclusions of the International Court of Justice,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“Instead, Israel is engaged in what appears to be relentless ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and an unprecedented expansion of its settlement enterprise. If Israel continues to be allowed to alter facts on the ground with impunity, there will soon be nothing left to salvage.”

Child and man killed near school in Al Mughayyir as settler militarization intensifies

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OHCHR OPT) condemns the killing of 14-year-old Aws Hamdi Naasan and 35-year-old Jihad Abu Naiem by Israeli settlers on 21 April in Al Mughayyir village in the occupied West Bank. It also condemns the killing of 25-year-old Odeh Awawdeh in a separate settler attack in Deir Dibwan, east of Ramallah. The killings continue a growing pattern of unchecked violence by a settler movement that is militarized and shielded by the state.

In Deir Dibwan, settlers entered the village and clashed with residents with an armed settler shooting and killing 25-year-old Odeh Awawdeh. Israeli security forces raided the town and closed its entrances during the incident, detaining 30 Palestinian men who were later released. According to Israeli media reports, Israeli security forces also held several settlers for questioning following the incident.

Settlers also attacked Al Mughayyir around noon on Tuesday and opened fire towards the boys’ school west of the village. Residents of Al Mughayyir circulated a video showing the shooting of the child while sheltering with others just outside his school as gunshots are heard from a distance. Eyewitnesses told OHCHR OPT that one of two armed settlers in partial uniform was shooting at the school, with four masked members of Israeli security forces in full uniform present at the scene.

The Israeli military issued a statement claiming that the incident occurred when a car carrying “civilians including a reservist soldier” stopped when stones were allegedly hurled. The statement said the reservist exited the vehicle and shot at suspects. According to Israeli media, the reservist was later suspended and an investigation was initiated.

At least nine Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of 2026 by settlers later identified by the Israeli military as reservist soldiers.

This convergence of settler and soldier is the result of measures taken by the Israeli authorities to intensify the militarization of the settler movement since 7 October 2023, including the enlistment and arming of thousands of settlers as reservists in regional battalions known as Hagmar. These measures also include arming and empowering settlements’ emergency response squads known as Kitat Konenut, and the relaxation of gun licensing requirements for Israelis, including settlers.

Across the West Bank, Palestinians are reporting attacks by men who are clearly known to them as settlers, but who are dressed in full or partial military uniform and are often carrying state-issued assault rifles and military gear. Palestinian survivors of such attacks describe their attackers as “settlers in uniform.”

Settler attacks on Palestinian communities are often carried out with the active support and participation of uniformed Israeli security forces, even when there is no ambiguity that the perpetrators are settlers.

Since 7 October 2023, 1,088 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, including 238 children. This includes 34 by settlers, 1,040 by Israeli security forces, and 14 Palestinians whose killings cannot be definitively attributed because Israeli security forces and settlers were attacking and shooting together.

No Israeli soldier has served a single day in prison for killing a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank since at least 2017. The only recorded conviction was in 2020 for which the sentence was three months of military service and three months of suspended jail time.

Settlers’ impunity is equally systematic. According to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, 93.6% of all investigations of settler violence in the occupied West Bank between 2005 and 2025 were closed without indictments, and only 3% led to partial or full convictions with lenient sentences.

“Israeli policies have erased whatever line that ever existed between settler and state violence. And the systematic impunity for killing Palestinians is the backbone of this non-stop horror,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of OHCHR OPT. “The international community must insist on meaningful accountability for the perpetrators of all unlawful killings in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to stop the bloodshed.”