FN: 36 000 fördrivna på Västbanken på ett år

Palestinians living under what human rights and international organizations term an Israeli apartheid regime face systematic violence from Israeli settlers and the Israel Defense Forces, mainly in the West Bank. A United Nations report found that out of 1,500 killings between 2017 and September 2025, Israeli authorities opened 112 investigations, resulting in only one conviction. In November 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, many of which result from attacks by residents of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages. Settler violence also includes acts known as price tag attacks that are in response to actions by the Israeli government, usually against Palestinian targets and occasionally against Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Palestinian police are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers, a fact which diminishes their credibility among Palestinians. Between January and November 2008, 515 criminal suits were opened by Israel against settlers for violence against Arabs or Israeli security forces; 502 of these involved "right wing radicals" while 13 involved "left wing anarchists". In 2008, the senior Israeli commander in the West Bank said that a hard core of a few hundred activists were involved in violence against the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Some prominent Jewish religious figures living in the occupied territories, as well as Israeli government officials, have condemned and expressed outrage over such behavior, while religious justifications for settler killings have also been given. Israeli media said the defense establishment began taking a harder line against unruly settlers starting in 2008. In 2011 the BBC reported that "vast majority of settlers are non-violent but some within the Israeli government acknowledge a growing problem with extremists." UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment. In the 21st century, there has been a steady increase in violence and terror perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. In 2012, an EU heads of mission report found that settler violence had more than tripled in the three years up to 2011. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) figures state that the annual rate of settler attacks (2,100 attacks in 8 years) has almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014. In 2021, there was yet another wave of settler violence which erupted after a 16-year-old settler died in a car chase with Israeli police after having hurled rocks at Palestinians. So far it has resulted in 44 incidents in the span of a few weeks, injuring two Palestinian children. In the latter parts of 2021, there has been a marked increase in settler violence toward Palestinians, condemned at the United Nations Security Council. This violence increased further following the election of a far-right government in 2022 which proposed to expand Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, as well as the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. In October 2024 Al Jazeera reported that there were 1,423 recorded incidents of settler violence in the west bank since 7 October, with 321 incidents, Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, 319 incidents in Nablus Governorate and 298 in Hebron Governorate.