Since October 7, 2023, Israel has escalated its violence in the occupied West Bank, killing 1,000 Palestinians.
As the world was distracted by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 56,331 people and uprooted nearly the entire population of 2. 3 million, Israel ramped up its violent raids on the West Bank, as well as its silence as Israeli settlers attack and kill Palestinian villagers.
The most recent casualty was Samer Bassam al-Zagharneh, a young man who was shot by Israeli soldiers on July 1.
According to the Wafa Palestinian news agency, al-Zagharneh was killed near the separation barrier, which Israel began building in 2002 to divide Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and which cuts through Palestinian communities and agricultural fields.
This is all you need to know about how we got here.
Who is attacking Palestinians in the West Bank?
Israeli forces and Israeli settlers from illegal settlements that are choking the West Bank.
Settlers launch sudden, violent raids on towns, burning property, attacking people, and trying to drive them out of their homes.
At the same time, the security forces have surrounded refugee camps and raided them relentlessly, driving yet more people from their homes and not allowing them to return.
Many settlers have also been handed semi-automatic weapons and “integrated” into Israeli forces in the West Bank, to compensate for all the personnel deployed to carry out the war on Gaza.
This has blurred the lines between the security forces and settlers, empowering the latter to escalate violence against Palestinians.
Why is Israel doing this?
To displace Palestinians and annexe their land, according to residents, experts, rights groups, and observers.
In 2024, Israel confiscated more Palestinian land in the West Bank than in the previous 20 years combined, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit tracking land theft in Palestine.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has led the charge after assuming control of the newly established “Settlements Administration” in February 2023.
The position allows Smotrich to advance Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank by working to extend Israeli civil law over the area, in direct contravention of international law.
Smotrich has approved new outposts – illegal not only under international law but also under Israeli law – confiscated land, and enforced “settlement and construction regulations”.
In reality, Smotrich is relying on the occupation and settler violence to uproot Palestinians so that he can extend and approve new illegal Israeli settlements, Al Jazeera previously reported.
Is violence escalating?
Every day.
Israeli forces killed 70 Palestinians in the West Bank in the first month of 2025. Over the last two months, they have killed 34 people, according to the Shireen Monitor, a local observatory named after the murdered Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Many of the casualties were the result of Israel’s ongoing raids.
Israel says the raids are to root out Palestinian armed groups, which sprang up in 2021 to resist Israel’s worsening violence and entrenching occupation, in refugee camps across the West Bank.
However, Israel has reportedly committed myriad human rights abuses on the ground, such as killing unarmed civilians, preventing families from burying their murdered loved ones and razing entire neighbourhoods to the ground to trigger mass displacement.
Where is Israel attacking?
Israel is attacking the refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams, Far’a and Nablus, generating mass displacement.
Israel has used some of the same tactics it has deployed in Gaza – such as laying complete siege to the camps and uprooting most of the inhabitants, according to Forensic Architecture, a research group that investigates and monitors human rights abuses.
Israel has also attacked medical facilities and bombed Tulkarem and Jenin camps, indiscriminately killing civilians.
What about the settler attacks?
There were about 1,800 settler attacks across the occupied West Bank between October 7, 2023, and December 16, 2024, according to data collected by Tech for Palestine, a collective of tech volunteers that monitor rights abuses and advocates for the liberation of Palestinians.
What’s more, the Israeli army reported that there were at least 414 settler attacks against Palestinians during the first half of 2025. Yet the real figure is likely higher.
Many of the attacks have taken place in Area C.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, which were signed between Israeli and Palestinian then-leaders to initiate a peace process, carved up the occupied West Bank into three zones: A, B and C.
Area A is ostensibly under the full administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – an entity born out of the Oslo Accords – while Area B is under the PA’s administrative governance and Israeli security.
Area C makes up more than 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and is under Israeli administrative and security control.
Is there an end in sight?
It doesn’t look like it.
The Israeli army and settlers have stepped up attacks against Palestinians in recent days. The United Nations has warned that the army is trying to evict 12 communities in Masafer Yatta, in the southern Hebron hills in Area C.
Israel is trying to justify this expulsion as the area being a “military zone”, and, therefore, needed for military training – a pretext used to uproot Palestinians from their lands for decades.
On June 25, about 100 heavily armed Israeli settlers violently attacked Palestinians in the village of Kfar Malik, killing three people. The settlers were reportedly trying to burn homes to the ground when Palestinians came out to try and stop them.
In the neighbouring village of Taybeh, settlers burned a car to ashes, as seen in a video obtained by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group monitoring abuses against Palestinians.
Al Jazeera has spoken to several Palestinians who say they are bracing for more attacks.
