DaysofPal – The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned on Sunday of a sharp escalation in violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, particularly during the ongoing olive harvest season. The organization said these assaults are taking place amid a total absence of deterrence or accountability and often under the direct protection of Israeli forces, reflecting, it said, an official and systematic policy that uses settler violence as a tool to entrench Israeli control and accelerate de facto annexation of Palestinian land.
In its statement, the Euro-Med Monitor said the current wave of attacks forms part of a broader strategy to consolidate Israeli dominance over the West Bank by driving out its Palestinian residents, expanding settler influence both geographically and administratively, and turning settlers into auxiliary forces for the Israeli military.
This system, the group warned, is creating new patterns of territorial control that deepen separation between Palestinian communities and eliminate the possibility of a contiguous or viable Palestinian state.
Wave of Attacks Under Army Protection
According to the organization’s field team, recent weeks have seen a marked increase in settler assaults targeting Palestinian civilians, particularly farmers, including physical attacks, theft of olive crops, arson of trees, property vandalism, and obstruction of access to farmland.
Dozens of these attacks, the group said, were carried out under direct military protection, with soldiers participating in some incidents, evidence of what it called “a unified structure implementing state policy aimed at uprooting Palestinians from their land.”
The Euro-Med Monitor documented the killing of Ahmad Rubhi al-Atrash, a Palestinian man shot dead by an Israeli settler on 3 November near Hebron’s Ras al-Joura area. Israeli authorities, the group said, tried to justify the killing by claiming al-Atrash attempted to steal the settler’s car, an allegation presented without evidence. Israeli forces reportedly blocked Palestinian medics from reaching the wounded man, leaving him to bleed to death before seizing his body and returning it a day later.
The organization noted that al-Atrash’s killing brings to 13 the number of Palestinians killed by settlers since the start of 2025 and 37 since October 2023, an unprecedented figure that marks a dangerous shift from property damage to lethal violence.
Between early October and 8 November alone, Euro-Med documented 324 settler attacks, an average of eight per day, including 163 incidents during the olive harvest season that left 143 Palestinians injured and over 4,200 trees destroyed across 77 West Bank villages.
Settler assaults, it said, are increasingly organized like armed militias operating from illegal outposts, acting with coordination and protection from Israeli forces. These groups raid Palestinian villages, attack homes and vehicles, and threaten residents to abandon their lands near settlements. In several cases, settlers erected tents on Palestinian farmland to establish new outposts, which later became bases for further expansion and attacks.
Impunity, Annexation, and Apartheid Policies
These ongoing attacks, Euro-Med said, have forcibly displaced around 5,200 Palestinians from communities near settler outposts, part of a deliberate plan to reshape the West Bank’s demographic reality and consolidate Israeli territorial control.
The organization stressed that Palestinians are being victimized twice: first by settler violence, and again by Israeli authorities who prosecute them for defending themselves or their property, while granting settlers full impunity. It said the Israeli government’s arming of settlers and granting them legal protection constitutes a grave breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian and human rights law.
Euro-Med also highlighted the near-total impunity enjoyed by settlers: fewer than 3% of settler violence cases result in conviction, reflecting what it described as “structural complicity between Israel’s military and judicial systems,” which share responsibility for protecting perpetrators and perpetuating violations.
The organization recalled the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 19, 2024, which affirmed that Israel’s failure to prevent or punish settler violence, alongside its excessive use of force against Palestinians, creates a coercive environment that violates their right to life and security, as guaranteed under international law, including the Hague Regulations (Article 46) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 27).
Euro-Med further condemned Israel’s continued establishment of new outposts under official protection and political cover, calling the expansion a “centralized state policy” disguised as spontaneous settlement activity. Such actions, it warned, constitute grave breaches of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits transferring the occupier’s civilian population into occupied territory, and amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 8).
The statement concluded that Israel’s ongoing occupation, settlement expansion, and segregation policies amount to a system of apartheid, as defined under the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and Article 7 of the Rome Statute.
Euro-Med called on the international community to act urgently on the ICJ’s advisory opinion, pressure Israel to end all settlement activities, dismantle illegal outposts, and disarm settler militias.
It also urged the International Criminal Court to expedite its investigations into war crimes, forced displacement, and apartheid practices in the occupied Palestinian territories, stressing that continued impunity only emboldens further violations and undermines global justice mechanisms.
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