ICSPR: Unprecedented Escalation of Settlement Expansion, Colonial Annexation, and Systematic Violations Against Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem

Date: 13 December 2025

Press Statement

ICSPR: Unprecedented Escalation of Settlement Expansion, Colonial Annexation, and Systematic Violations Against Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem

The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR) affirms that the current period constitutes one of the most dangerous phases facing the occupied Palestinian territory, amid an unprecedented escalation in crimes and policies of settlement expansion and colonial annexation. The Israeli occupation has approved the construction of 764 new settlement units, in addition to announcing the legalization of 19 additional settlements in the West Bank. This represents a clear acceleration of the annexation project and the imposition of colonial faits accomplis on the ground, aimed at eliminating any realistic opportunity for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, through the fragmentation of Palestinian geography and the isolation of cities and villages from their surroundings.

ICSPR warns of the rapidly accelerating settlement expansion, which has reached unprecedented levels. The number of settlers is estimated at nearly one million in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, distributed across 147 settlements and more than 224 settlement outposts, with dozens of new outposts established over the past three years. Plans have been advanced to build more than 50,000 additional settlement units, within the framework of an organized colonial scheme aimed at redrawing the demographic map and deepening control over the West Bank.

ICSPR strongly condemns the escalating terrorist attacks by settlers, which fall within a systematic policy carried out through clear coordination between the Israeli occupation army and settler militias, as roles are exchanged in attacks against Palestinians and their property. ICSPR and human rights organizations have documented 1,229 settler attacks in 2023 and 1,423 attacks in 2024, while the number of attacks up to December 2025 has reached approximately 1,860—an average of no fewer than four attacks per day. These attacks included the burning of homes, uprooting of trees, destruction of crops, and direct assaults on civilians, all under conditions of total impunity.

ICSPR monitors a dangerous escalation in policies of forcible displacement, particularly in Area “C,” which constitutes approximately 60% of the West Bank. OCHA data and documentation reveal the displacement of more than 1,000 Palestinians since the beginning of 2025, in addition to the displacement of nearly 32,000 Palestinians during the recent period in the northern West Bank governorates, especially among Bedouin communities and in Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarm. This has occurred through the storming of refugee camps, shelling, home demolitions, land confiscation, and the prohibition of construction, within a framework of forced demographic change serving the colonial annexation project.

ICSPR confirms that this settlement escalation is accompanied by grave violations and war crimes against the civilian population. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli occupation policies have resulted in the killing of 1,119 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the injury of more than 12,000 others, and the arrest of 24,083 citizens, including 1,600 children, as part of a comprehensive security policy aimed at killing, repression, intimidation, ethnic cleansing, and the imposition of control by force. ICSPR has also documented more than 450 incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem during 2025, including the storming of UNRWA’s headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the raising of the Israeli flag over it, in a clear attempt to undermine the agency’s role and target the right of return.

ICSPR considers that the totality of these crimes and policies constitutes an integrated colonial system of settlement expansion, racial discrimination, settler terrorism, forcible displacement, and colonial annexation. These practices amount to crimes of ethnic cleansing and systematic persecution under international law, threaten the Palestinian presence on its land, and effectively eliminate the two-state solution and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

ICSPR stresses the necessity of urgent and effective international action to immediately halt settlement crimes and settler attacks, hold Israeli occupation leaders accountable before international justice, impose deterrent measures and sanctions on the occupying power, ensure the protection of Palestinian civilians, and prevent the transformation of the West Bank and Jerusalem into a permanent colonial reality that undermines regional and international peace and security and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.