‘Extreme becomes normal’: Most destructive 2 years for Palestinians since 1967 – Israeli NGOs
Palestinians carrying food and humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip, June 2025
Matan Golan reports in Haaretz on 3 December 2025:
The last two years have been the most destructive and deadly for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, according to a joint report by 12 Israeli human rights organizations collectively known as “The Platform.”
It finds that the most dramatic deterioration occurred in 2025. The report notes a sharp rise in Palestinian fatalities – including deaths from starvation; expanding population-displacement policies; and the normalization of human rights violations that had been considered exceptional during the onset of the war.
The report, published in Hebrew 58 years following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, draws on a series of publications from recent years.
It suggests that the harm to Palestinians has stemmed both from changes in the nature of warfare in Gaza and from the way Israel has exercised control over the territory. The report highlights a breakdown of military command and discipline, increasingly extreme government rhetoric, harsher treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and government measures that weaken legal and civil oversight bodies.
Taken together, the report states, these developments have allowed “extreme practices to become operational and policy norms.”
The findings were jointly authored by the following human rights organizations: Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, HaMoked – Center for the Defence of the Individual, Yesh Din, Combatants for Peace, Ir Amim, Emek Shaveh, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Breaking the Silence and Torat Tzedek.
Caught between famine and IDF fire: Gaza’s humanitarian crisis
In Gaza, the report notes that 67,000 Palestinians had been killed by October 2025, including roughly 20,000 children and 10,000 women, and an estimated additional 10,000 people remain buried under the rubble. The number of wounded also surged – while fewer than 100,000 injuries were recorded in 2024, the figure rose to 170,000 in 2025.
The report further states that the number of displaced people in Gaza reached 1.9 million – 90 percent of the population, which suffers from the collapse of essential infrastructure, including water, electricity, healthcare and agriculture.
Based on data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, the report notes that between August 2024, when United Nations declared the highest severity of famine, until October 2025, 461 people died of starvation, including 157 children. Medical sources in Gaza also reported that as of last July, 13,000 children were suffering from severe malnutrition.
Ibrahim al-Sidda demonstrating how his son Jassem was sleeping when he was shot to death by a soldier during an IDF raid in the village of Jit
Further data from the Gaza Health Ministry indicates that in contrast to 2024, when no deaths were documented during food distribution, in 2025, 2,306 Palestinians were killed and 16,929 wounded near distribution centers. The human rights groups emphasized that attempts to obtain food had become life-threatening efforts.
Chaos on the ground, including live fire by Israeli forces and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation security, had been been described by aid personnel as “Gaza Olympics” in previous Haaretz reports.
“The Platform” also collected dozens of testimonies documenting the systematic use of Palestinians as human shields, including children and the elderly, who are sent into life-threatening operations in buildings and underground tunnels to guarantee that the areas have not been rigged with explosives before IDF soldiers enter. Palestinians are captured, handcuffed and blindfolded, and sometimes dressed in IDF uniforms, beaten or humiliated.
Occupation intensified: settlements, military operations and Palestinian detention in the West Bank
Amid the ongoing war, the human rights organizations report that Israel has shifted its policy in the West Bank, aiming to advance annexation and expand its control over Palestinian controlled territory in Areas A and B.
A sharp rise in the number of settler outposts, some of which were approved and legalized by the Israeli government, was reported by Peace Now: while 32 outposts were established in 2023, 61 were built in 2024, and by September 2025, 68 more had been built.
The report also notes that in 2024, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich ordered civil services to be provided to 68 outposts, including some with no legal prospect of formalization. Earlier this year, permits were granted to authorize the construction of 1,165 housing units in settlements, compared to just three permits issued to Palestinians out of more than a thousand applications.
In May, the report notes that the security cabinet enabled land registration in the West Bank (known in Hebrew as tabu) for the first time since 1968. In addition to the 24,258 dunams (5,994 acres) that were declared as state land in 2024, this unprecedented policy allows large parts of land without documented ownership to be turned into state land and eventually turned into Jewish-only settlements.
Over the past two years, the report states, Israel has been designating areas under Palestinian control as Israeli archaeological sites as a means of dispossessing Palestinians of their land. In the summer of 2025, Israel issued 60 archaeological site declarations, most of them in the Nablus area of the West Bank. Included amongst the sites is Sebastia, the largest archaeological expropriation order in the West Bank since 1967 on 1,800 dunams (nearly 450 acres) of privately owned land in the northern West Bank.
A settler outpost in the Palestinian village of Mukhmas, in the West Bank, November 2025
This practice is also expanding in East Jerusalem, where accelerated land registration is being used as a tool of dispossession, alongside roadblocks, inadequate municipal services, rising school dropout rates and unprecedented settlement expansion.
In addition, the report states that in August 2025, the Knesset approved construction of Israeli housing projects in the E1 area of the West Bank, outside of Jerusalem, for the first time – a move intended to sever the north of the Israeli-occupied territory from the south, undermining a two-state solution.
3,401 housing units were approved for construction in the E1 area of the West Bank.
In March, the security cabinet approved paving a separate road for Palestinians south of E1 to enable the building plans and future annexation of the nearby settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.
On the military front, intensive IDF operations in the northern West Bank have caused massive destruction and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams as part of Operation Iron Wall.
The report suggests that military practices from Gaza have spilled over into the West Bank, highlighting an expansion of rules of engagement leading to increased civilian harm.
According to UN data, since October 7, 2023, 1,001 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including 210 children, 20 women and seven people with disabilities. Overall, Palestinian casualty figures throughout 2024 and 2025 was much higher than in previous years, the report states.
The report also notes that there were no criminal investigations in 70 percent of military court cases involving Israeli soldiers harming Palestinians or their property.
Of the investigations that were opened, only 5 percent resulted in the soldier being prosecuted. Based on incidents between 2018 and 2022, the report states that the likelihood of a soldier being prosecuted for killing a Palestinian is just 0.4 percent.
Settler violence has also increased during the war, according to the report, and so has government funding for the expansion of settlements. According to UN data, from the beginning of 2024 until September 2025, 2,660 settler attacks were documented that resulted in property damage or bodily harm. The report emphasizes that this violence occurs with near-complete impunity, as 94 percent of cases reported between 2005 and 2024 did not result in indictments.
“The Platform” describes how thousands of settlers were mobilized during the war to serve in settlement security squads and were provided with weapons, and that in many violent attacks against Palestinians, armed settlers in uniform participated directly.
Beyond human rights violations and the killing of Palestinians, the report notes that Israeli policies have contributed to a severe economic crisis in the West Bank. Tens of thousands of farmers are prevented from accessing their land, and more than 100,000 Palestinians have lost their livelihoods due to restrictions on entry to Israel.
The proliferation of checkpoints and movement restrictions in the West Bank deepens the economic crisis affecting hundreds of thousands and undermines the overall stability of Palestinian society.
Regarding Israeli detention facilities, the report states that Palestinian security prisoners are held under inhumane conditions, with facilities operating without transparency and in disregard of both Israeli and international law.
This includes the deaths of at least 98 deaths of detainees and prisoners during the war, many of which were caused by denial of medical treatment, abuse and other severe rights violations. Additionally, the number of administrative detainees has risen over the past year to 3,577, three times the pre-war average.
Administrative detainees are held under “preventive detention,” where detainees are held without trial or the disclosure of the intelligence or evidence for their detention, and the detainees’ lawyers are not privy to evidence against them, other than a short summary of suspicions against the client.
The human rights organizations reference audit reports by the Public Defense on detention facilities that were censored during the war due to concerns that their publication could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza.
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