Declassified UK: Ethnic cleansing escalates in the West Bank

Posted: 26th March 2026

Ethnic cleansing escalates in the West Bank

As Israel ramps up its illegal war with Iran and sustains its assault on Lebanon whilst repeatedly violating the ceasefire in Gaza, its land grab in the West Bank is largely going under the radar.

 Illegal settlers are intensifying violence and aggression against Palestinians and enabling Israel’s strategic objectives of dispossession.

In the last few days, settlers have rampaged through various Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, torching homes and vehicles.

Simultaneous attacks took place in at least six communities, including villages nearJenin and Nablus and in the agricultural regions of Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley.

Meanwhile, separate hit-and-run incidents by Israeli settlers near Bethlehemon Tuesday injured five Palestinians.

These patterns of violence suggest they are not accidental, but systemic. Six Palestinians have been shot dead in settler attacks in the West Bank since the start of March.

Less than two weeks ago, in the Palestinian town of Tammoun in the northern occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a car carrying a Palestinian family, killing a Palestinian couple and two of their children, leaving two other children injured. “We killed dogs,” the soldier told surviving 12-year-old Khaled as he pulled him from the vehicle, before assaulting him.

This takes the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers or soldiers to more than 1,000 since October 2023.

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The surge in settler violence this week  complements ongoing land seizures by Israel and serves its decades-long objective to uproot Palestinians from their land.

And they are exploiting the focus on other parts of the region such as Iran. Human Rights Watch notes that “armed settlers in the West Bank are taking advantage of the fog of war to seize land and advance Israel’s ongoing dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

The settler attacks, combined with Israel’s forced displacement orders, home demolitions and the turbocharging of unlawful settlement expansion have forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes across the West Bank. Amnesty International recently concluded that Israel’s annexation of the territory is an irreversible reality.

Predictably, international responses have lacked any urgency or real action. Britain and the EU are both condemning the attacks – calling on Israel to take “immediate and effective” action and “abide by its obligations to international law” – but refusing to sanction the state in any serious way.

The UK government’s constant call for a “two-state solution” obscures rather than confronts the gravity of the situation. The illegal settlers share the same opposition to Palestinian statehood, freedom and autonomy as the Israeli state. The brutalities they carry out are not incidental to that reality; they sustain it.

Hamza Yusuf

Regular Contributor
Declassified UK