The lives and bodies forever scarred by Israeli state-backed settler violence
Mohammed Da’amin 43, his wife Wafa 30 and their children Ahmad 4, Saddam 1 and Omri 6 months, in As-Samu’, South Hebron Hills
Oren Ziv reports in +972 on 11 November 2025:
If certain areas of the occupied West Bank were once considered relatively safe, today, every Palestinian community, olive grove, field, or town is vulnerable to attacks. Any encounter with Israeli settlers — particularly near outposts established since the start of the war — can turn violent within seconds. The presence of international or Israeli activists, once a modest deterrent, no longer offers much protection. No one is off limits: not the elderly, not women, not children, not even infants.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since October 7, 2023, Israeli settlers have killed 33 Palestinians in the West Bank and wounded more than 1,400 others. October 2025 saw over 260 attacks, an average of eight per day — the highest monthly tally since OCHA began documenting such incidents in 2006.
This year’s olive harvest season has been the most violent in recent years, with some 167 documented assaults that left more than 150 Palestinians injured and destroyed more than 5,700 trees and saplings across 87 villages. And in the past week, Israeli settlers have torched Palestinian properties, fields, and even a mosque, prompting the Israeli Police to make several arrests and army officials to issue a rare rebuke.
But “settler violence” can be a misleading term. In recent years, and especially since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have operated in near-total symbiosis with the army and state authorities. In suggesting that settlers are rogue actors, the phrase obscures the state’s central role in the colonization of the West Bank and allows Israeli politicians, the army, and the public to dismiss such violence as the work of “a handful of extremists.”
The coordination between settlers and state authorities is often explicit. In May, for instance, Israeli forces demolished nearly the entire village of Khalet Al-Daba in Masafer Yatta. Soon after, settlers from a nearby outpost launched a wave of violence, culminating in a September assault that wounded women and infants. Barely a week later, the last remaining structures were destroyed by Israeli authorities.
In such a reality, it is nearly impossible to distinguish between the actions of Israeli settlers, soldiers, and police — who often arrive at the scene not to protect Palestinians, but to arrest them, invariably on the basis of false settler complaints.
This escalation is not incidental; it is part of a deliberate mechanism designed to push Palestinians off their land. With the backing and often direct coordination of the army and police, settler violence has already wiped dozens of communities off the map in recent months.