ICSPR: The West Bank at the Eye of the Storm… Israel Escalates Annexation, Settlement Expansion, and Ethnic Cleansing through Settler Terrorism and Organized Military Aggression
Date: 30 July 2026
Press Release
ICSPR: The West Bank at the Eye of the Storm… Israel Escalates Annexation, Settlement Expansion, and Ethnic Cleansing through Settler Terrorism and Organized Military Aggression
The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) strongly condemns the unprecedented Israeli escalation in the occupied West Bank, which constitutes a direct extension of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. This escalation reflects the transition of Israel’s far-right government to a more dangerous phase in implementing its colonial settlement project aimed at imposing the de facto annexation of Palestinian territory, emptying it of its indigenous population, and creating new demographic and geographic realities through military force and settler terrorism.
ICSPR affirms that the situation in the West Bank is no longer merely a security escalation or a series of isolated attacks, but rather an official and systematic Israeli policy designed to reshape the Palestinian reality through killings, extrajudicial executions, forced displacement, land confiscation, settlement expansion, home demolitions, and the destruction of the foundations of civilian life. These acts amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of apartheid, while deliberately undermining the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state, in blatant violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the Four Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice declaring the illegality of the Israeli occupation and settlement enterprise.
ICSPR stresses that the crimes committed in the town of Tell, west of Nablus, and the subsequent widespread attacks on the city of Nablus and surrounding Palestinian villages, clearly expose the organic partnership between the Israeli occupation army and settler militias in advancing the project of annexation and ethnic cleansing. According to field information documented by human rights organizations, on the morning of Friday, 24 July 2026, armed settlers infiltrated the outskirts of the town from the settlement outpost of Havat Gilad, assaulting Palestinian residents and their property. The events subsequently escalated into an exchange of gunfire that resulted in injuries to several Palestinians and the killing of two Israeli occupation soldiers under circumstances that warrant an independent and impartial international investigation.
Rather than fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power to protect the civilian population, Israeli occupation forces opened live fire directly at Palestinian civilians, killing four Palestinians and injuring four others. They then launched a large-scale arrest campaign targeting approximately thirty Palestinians and initiated procedures to demolish the home of one of the slain Palestinians as part of the internationally prohibited policy of collective punishment. On the same day, an Israeli special forces unit stormed Nablus Specialized Hospital and arrested two young Palestinians from the emergency department while they were receiving medical treatment, constituting a grave violation of the protected status of medical facilities. Meanwhile, Israeli forces provided full protection to settler militias that carried out coordinated attacks on the villages of Sarra, Urif, Jit, Far’ata, and Beit Furik, setting fire to homes, vehicles, and agricultural lands while assaulting residents. These attacks confirm that settler terrorism has become an integral component of Israel’s military apparatus and an official instrument for enforcing forced displacement and land seizure.
ICSPR considers that the Israeli government exploited the events in Tell as a pretext to intensify its organized aggression throughout the occupied West Bank by tightening closures, increasing military checkpoints, escalating raids, arrests, and targeted killings, imposing additional collective punishment measures, and accelerating settlement expansion plans. This has occurred alongside an unprecedented escalation in official incitement by the Israeli Prime Minister, government ministers, military commanders, and settler leaders, including explicit calls to destroy Palestinian villages, erase them, and forcibly displace their inhabitants. These developments clearly demonstrate that the ongoing crimes are not spontaneous reactions to security incidents but rather the implementation of a premeditated political and military strategy aimed at imposing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and resolving the conflict through military force, settlement expansion, and terror against Palestinian civilians.
ICSPR notes that documented indicators and statistics reflect the unprecedented scale of this escalation. During the first half of 2026, Israeli occupation forces and settlers carried out more than 11,074 attacks, including 3,488 attacks perpetrated by settlers. The Israeli government approved the construction of 10,000 new settlement units, established dozens of settlement outposts—including 21 outposts in areas classified as Area B—while substantially increasing settlement budgets and arming tens of thousands of settlers.
Settler attacks since the beginning of 2026 have resulted in the killing of 27 Palestinians, including 22 in the governorates of Nablus and Ramallah. Since 7 October 2023, the number of Palestinians killed by settlers or during settler attacks has risen to 68, while approximately 5,200 Palestinians have been injured. During the same period, Israeli occupation forces killed 1,122 Palestinians in the West Bank, arrested more than 20,000 Palestinians since October 2023, forcibly displaced 118 Palestinian communities, destroyed thousands of homes and civilian structures, uprooted 45,000 trees, including 26,000 olive trees, stole 15,000 heads of livestock, and established more than 1,200 military checkpoints and gates surrounding Palestinian cities and towns. These measures form part of a systematic policy aimed at fragmenting Palestinian geography, strangling the national economy, and coercing Palestinians into forced displacement.
ICSPR emphasizes that these violations constitute an integrated system of international crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, persecution, apartheid, forcible transfer of population, and unlawful colonial settlement. They represent grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, relevant United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which affirmed the illegality of Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise and the obligation to bring them to an end. ICSPR further stresses that the continued impunity enjoyed by Israel, together with the ongoing provision of weapons and political and diplomatic support by certain states, constitutes direct complicity in the continuation of these crimes and undermines the international justice system and efforts to protect civilians and enforce international law.
ICSPR holds the Israeli occupation government fully responsible for all crimes committed in the occupied West Bank. It also holds the international community—particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions—legally and morally responsible for the continued failure to end impunity. ICSPR calls for an immediate shift from statements of condemnation to concrete and binding measures, including the imposition of comprehensive sanctions on Israel, the suspension of all forms of military and security cooperation, a complete embargo on the export and transfer of weapons, the implementation of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, and full support for the International Criminal Court by expediting its investigations and issuing arrest warrants against all Israeli officials responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide. It further calls for the provision of urgent international protection for the Palestinian people, support for their steadfastness on their land, and the realization of their inalienable right to self-determination, the end of the occupation and settlement enterprise, and the establishment of an independent and fully sovereign Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital.
ICSPR reiterates that the occupied West Bank now stands at the heart of Israel’s colonial project and that the continuation of military aggression, settlement expansion, and settler terrorism threatens to further undermine what remains of the international legal order. This demands urgent and decisive action by the United Nations and the international community to halt these crimes and hold their perpetrators accountable. ICSPR further affirms that the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, together with effective international accountability mechanisms and the enforcement of international law, remains the path toward defeating the projects of annexation, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism, and enabling the Palestinian people to realize their freedom, independence, and internationally recognized rights.
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