The West Bank is entering a new year amid signs of a growing threat to Palestinians’ lives and livelihoods, as Israel moves forward with plans for a permanent military redeployment in the north, alongside a marked escalation in settler attacks against Palestinians across wide areas of the territory.
While Israel presents its military measures as steps to enhance stability and control, field data and reports by human rights groups point to a very different track.
A senior military official in the Central Command says that 2025 witnessed what he described as “an improvement in security,” alongside a rise in what he termed “nationalist crimes”—referred to by others in Israel as “settler terrorism.”
In a media briefing presenting an annual assessment of settler violence, the official said approximately 870 incidents were recorded in 2025, compared with about 680 in 2024—an increase of nearly 27 percent. He acknowledged that sensitive periods, such as the olive harvest season or the aftermath of certain attacks, saw additional spikes, noting that around 120 incidents during the year were classified as “most severe.”
Explaining the security establishment’s response, the officer said these figures prompted the creation, in May, of a joint task force comprising the army, police, Border Police, and the Shin Bet, aimed at “controlling, preventing, investigating, and bringing those involved to trial.” He added that in an effort to create legal and economic deterrence, other measures had been activated, including seizure of vehicles and the placing of electronic monitoring devices on some right-wing individuals involved in hostile acts against Palestinians,
However, according to the same security assessment, this approach is not presented as a direct solution to the phenomenon of settler violence. Rather, it is framed within a broader operational vision focused on protecting settlements and countering what the military establishment describes as “Palestinian threats.”
In this context, the source points to steps taken to establish a permanent Israeli military presence in the northern West Bank, including the positioning of a company size and a battalion-size force and the return of the Menashe Brigade headquarters to inside the West Bank after it had been relocated outside the territory following the implementation of the 2005 disengagement law. The stated aim is “to enhance field control, ensure settler security, and preserve freedom of movement for forces.”
Palestinian human rights organizations on the ground affirm that settler attacks rose sharply in 2025. Speaking to Alhurra, Hassan Malihat, general supervisor of the Al-Baydar Human Rights Organization, said the group documented “exactly 5,890 attacks” in Bedouin communities alone. Malihat notes that these figures do not cover the entire West Bank, but are limited to Bedouin communities, reflecting, in his words, the intensity of pressure concentrated on this specific segment of the Palestinian population.
He adds that the attacks ranged from setting homes on fire, snatching and poisoning of livestock, cutting water pipes, and vandalizing solar energy units, to assaults on schools—culminating in the displacement of 16 entire Bedouin communities in 2025. According to the organization’s records, these practices were not isolated or individual incidents, but a systemic pattern aimed at forcing residents to leave and cleansing vast swathes of land of their indigenous population.
Most of these incidents were concentrated in the Jordan Valley and Masafer Yatta, before the pressure expanded toward the end of 2025 to include the Jerusalem periphery and Bedouin communities east of Jerusalem.
Additionally, there’s a clear gap between United Nations data and figures and those put forward by the Israeli security establishment.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), between January 1 and December 1, 2025, a total of 227 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces or settlers, nearly half of them in the governorates of Jenin and Nablus alone. During the same period, thousands of Palestinians were injured in operations, raids, and repeated attacks. In just one week—between November 25 and December 1—OCHA documented 212 Palestinian injuries across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
These figures show that settler attacks constitute a central component of the violence directed at Palestinians. During the same period, OCHA documented 35 settler attacks that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both.
In those attacks, 29 Palestinians were injured—20 directly by settlers and nine during interventions by Israeli forces. Over the course of 2025, the office recorded a total of 1,680 settler attacks across more than 270 Palestinian communities, averaging nearly five attacks per day—an indication of a recurring pattern of violence rather than intermittent individual incidents.
According to the UN report, the impact of these attacks is not limited to injuries and fatalities, but extends to targeting livelihoods and vital infrastructure, particularly during the olive harvest season. OCHA documented 178 season-related attacks in October and November, including assaults on farmers in their fields, theft of crops and harvesting equipment, vandalism of olive trees and saplings, and an expansion in the geographic scope of attacks to 88 communities, the highest number recorded in years.
In this context, the report cites the testimony of Iyad, a farmer from Burqa near Nablus, who stood beside his tractor, which was burned by settlers in early December 2025, and said: “My tractor was that mattered for my work and the source of my family’s income.” His case illustrates how physical violence is coupled with the destruction of livelihoods, pushing residents toward displacement.
The discrepancy between the army’s narrative, Al-Baydar’s data, and the OCHA report raises questions about documentation and classification mechanisms. Experts note that the security establishment relies on a relatively narrow definition of what it classifies as a “nationalist crime,” while human rights organizations include attacks on property and vital infrastructure, attempts at expulsion, and economic pressure as part of systematic violence—even when they do not always result in physical injuries.
But the contradiction goes beyond statistics to the political context. Haaretz revealed that a meeting was held in the Knesset under the banner “A Salute to the Pioneers of Settlement Activities in the Hills and Farms,” attended by ministers, lawmakers, and activists linked to illegal settlement outposts. The newspaper reports that the dominant discourse in the hall portrayed these groups as “new pioneers,” with complete disregard for the suffering of Palestinians affected by their attacks.
Haaretz notes that among the participants were individuals who had previously been detained, convicted, or suspected of involvement in attacks against Palestinians, and some participants had been subjected to administrative exclusion orders from the West Bank. The presence of these individuals, if read politically, transforms the gathering from a symbolic occasion into a political message that provides social and political cover for those associated with violence on the ground.
Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech of the Jewish Power party said during the meeting that settlers were being subjected to a “smear campaign” and work “under persecution and administrative detention,” before offering reassurance by saying they “will not walk alone.”
According to observers, this rhetoric illustrates how the political track intersects with realities on the ground, effectively undermining the claims of the security agencies of “enforcing the law.”
Malihat says the price paid by Palestinians is not measured by the number of “classified incidents,” but by the people’s ability to remain on their land when attacks become a tool of pressure that ultimately drives them to leave.
