As part of its continuing effort to erase the Palestinian people, Israel has escalated its settlement expansion since 7 October 2023, which has paved the way for increasing settler violence, as recognised by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its July 2024 Advisory Opinion. In Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, the ICJ found that Israel was carrying out acts of racial segregation and apartheid in the Palestinian territory and that its presence is illegal, breaching peremptory norms of international law, namely the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the prohibition against the acquisition of territory through use of force. The latter norm is enshrined in Article 2(2) of the United Nations (UN) Charter and constitutes the very basis of the post-World War II international order, and has been recalled in countless resolutions from the UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions that condemn Israel’s acquisition of territory by force and advancement of its settler enterprise therein.

More recently, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report in which it concluded that the acceleration of settlement activity in the occupied West Bank . . . deepened the coercive environment that simultaneously displaced an unprecedented number of Palestinians and facilitated the further entrenchment of unlawful settler presence”. In the same vein, Al-Haq further highlighted that, far from being isolated incidents, these violent attacks are “a direct result of Israel’s aggressive campaign of settlement across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the wider imposition of its settler colonial apartheid regime”.

This coercive environment thus serves the Zionist agenda to appropriate more Palestinians lands and engineer the demography in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Settler violence is backed by Israel through equipment, funding and training as well as officials’ public statements. Afterwards, Israeli settlers’ criminal conduct is never genuinely investigated by Israel’s police, which upholds the long-standing culture of impunity for acts committed by Israelis against Palestinians, and bolsters further settler violence.

Against this background, a pattern of incidents has emerged, involving abductions, detentions and beatings of Palestinians by settlers, in attacks carried out over hours, until the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) intervene. Al-Haq has collected testimonies documenting this pattern.