State-backed Israeli settler violence forces West Bank displacement: Human Rights Watch
Israeli settlers put up Israeli flags on a Palestinian structure on the outskirts of Beit Sahour on 14 August 2026
Al Jazeera reports on 20 August 2026:
Dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure due to escalating attacks by Israeli settlers, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
Increased settler attacks, along with the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements illegal under international law, are driving a wave of forced displacement of Palestinians, the US-based rights group said in a report released on Thursday.
The report accuses Israeli authorities of arming, funding and granting impunity to settlers to carry out the attacks. Israeli settler violence has been growing since the current government took office in December 2022.
But attacks spiked in the first two months of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, with killings including those of children, assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property demolition and theft among the reported abuses, the report adds.
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HRW investigated settler attacks in seven Palestinian West Bank communities in April and May, including Al-Mughayyir, Mikhmas and Taybeh, in Ramallah governorate; Jalud and Qaryut, in Nablus governorate; and Khirbet Hamsa and Muarrajat East, in the Jordan Valley.
The report found that, sometimes, armed settlers acted alongside Israeli military units or with soldiers standing by yet failing to intervene, during raids on Palestinian residents and property, contributing to a pattern of forced displacement.