The U.N.’s Palestinian refugees agency (UNRWA) reported Wednesday ongoing Israeli destruction and forced displacement in the occupied West Bank, with its director there warning that easing in Gaza should not be used to intensify the grip of occupation elsewhere.
“The future of Gaza and West Bank are one. A drawdown in Gaza should not become an opportunity to tighten the grip of occupation elsewhere,” said Roland Friedrich, the director of UNRWA Affairs for the occupied West Bank.
A cease-fire agreement took effect in Gaza on Oct. 10, based on a phased plan presented by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Friedrich pointed out a significant escalation of settler violence and settlement expansion across the West Bank, “pushing vulnerable Palestinian communities from their lands amid increasingly coercive conditions, paving the way for annexation.”
According to Palestinian figures, illegal Israeli settlers have carried out 7,154 attacks against Palestinians and their property across the West Bank since October 2023, killing 33 Palestinians and displacing 33 Bedouin communities.
The northern refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams have also been emptied, as the residents are strictly prevented from returning to camps under the same policy, the director added.
He reaffirmed the UNRWA’s readiness to work in cooperation with all parties “to ensure a comprehensive outcome that can form the cornerstone of peace and stability for the entirety of the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Since October 2023, the Israeli genocidal war has killed over 68,200 people and injured more than 170,300 in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The occupied West Bank also witnessed a sharp rise in attacks over the same period, with at least 1,056 Palestinians killed, around 10,300 injured, and more than 20,000, including 1,600 children, detained, according to official Palestinian figures.
Settler violence on rise
Last weekend, Israeli settlers descended on Palestinian olive harvesters and activists in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, beating them with clubs in an attack Palestinian health officials said sent at least one woman to the hospital with serious injuries.
The attack Sunday in the town of Turmus Ayya, which was captured in videos obtained by The Associated Press, came as Palestinians say settler violence in the region is worsening.
The U.N. and rights groups have raised the alarm as harvest season begins and Palestinian farmers are at growing risk while gathering olives.
“Settler violence has skyrocketed in scale and frequency,” Ajith Sunghay, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territory, said in a statement released Tuesday.
“Two weeks into the start of the 2025 harvest, we have already seen severe attacks by armed settlers against Palestinian men, women, children and foreign solidarity activists,” he added.
In one of the videos obtained by the AP, a masked man was seen running through an olive grove and beating at least two people with a club, including a woman as she lay motionless on the ground. The masked man appeared to be wearing tzitzit, a ritual fringed garment for Jews.
The woman was hospitalized with serious injuries, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry said.
In a separate video, more than a dozen masked men were seen running down a village road alongside an olive grove, pursuing a car. One settler clubbed the car and opened the door. A passenger managed to escape and run away with the group of men running after him.
A third video showed flames and smoke rising from several torched cars.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the head of the West Bank police force said in an internal police WhatsApp group that the footage of the masked settler beating the woman “kept him up at night” and instructed officers to bring the settler to justice.
Israel’s military and police did not respond to an AP request for comment on the attack.
Turmus Ayya, whose population is predominantly Palestinian American, has long been a target of settler attacks, but villagers say the violence worsened during the Israel-Hamas war.
It’s nestled in a valley surrounded by hilltops crowned with Israeli settlements and outposts. Since the killing of a 14-year-old Palestinian-American, Amer Rabee, by Israeli forces in the town in April during protests against settler violence, and the military’s perceived failure to curb it, has provoked regular clashes with settlers.
More broadly, settler violence is surging across the West Bank. The U.N. says the first half of 2025 has seen 757 settler attacks causing casualties or property damage – a 13% increase compared with the same period last year.
The first week of olive harvest season has seen more than 150 settler attacks and over 700 olive trees uprooted, broken or poisoned, according to Muayyad Shaaban, who heads an office in the Palestinian Authority that is tracking the violence.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Settler advocates hold key Israeli Cabinet positions that grant them and the settlers an important say over the West Bank.
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