UN warns West Bank settler violence hits ‘all-time high’ as calls grow to end occupation

While settlers and Israeli security forces have “often” acted together to attack local Palestinian communities, the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) warned on Wednesday.

As of 24 July, the agency reports that 76 Palestinians and one Israeli have died this year in settler attacks. Since Friday, eight Palestinians, including a boy, and two members of the Israeli military have also been killed in the region.

The number of settler attacks has increased each year since 2023 following the brutal Hamas attacks on southern Israeli communities, rising to 1,835 last year, according to the UN’s humanitarian aid office (OCHA). 

There were about 190 attacks per month in the first four months of 2026, putting the West Bank on a trajectory to reach more than 2,000 attacks by the end of the year.

Alongside security forces, Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with financial incentives from the government, frequently attack families, burn mosques and destroy and confiscate property, OHCHR reported.

Movement restrictions preventing Palestinians from accessing essential services are now tighter than ever, the office added.

“We are alarmed by the Israeli Government’s announcement to further increase the number of settlements and outposts and open calls by Israeli leaders for revenge and collective punishment against Palestinian communities, accompanied by threats to turn the West Bank into another Gaza,” OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said.

Two-State solution must remain

Speaking from Jerusalem on Friday, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov called the continued loss of life in the West Bank “deeply alarming”, urging Israel to hold perpetrators accountable and all actors to pursue a two-state solution.

“There is no military or violent solution to this conflict,” Mr. Alakbarov said.

In September, the General Assembly endorsed the New York Declaration, calling for a two-State solution, though Israel and the US voted against it.

The escalating violence in the West Bank comes two years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967 is illegal and that countries should not recognise Israel’s actions related to the occupation. Israel quickly condemned the ruling.

Briefing the Security Council in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Alakbarov noted that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently announced the approval of several new settlements, which the peace coordinator called “illegal under international law”.

“I call upon all parties to take urgent steps to reverse the dangerous trajectory in the West Bank,” he said.

On Monday, Israeli troops forcibly entered a UN facility in East Jerusalem where hundreds of Palestinian refugees receive free vocational training each year. The UN and its partners in the occupied territories condemned the action, which violates international law.

Call to end occupation

OHCHR’s Ms. Shamdasani reiterated on Wednesday the UN’s call for countries to work together to “bring an end to the Israeli occupation” of the West Bank.

“With attacks by Israeli settlers, and the creation of settlements and outposts hitting an all-time high, third States must act urgently and in unison to halt the continuing killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people,” she said.