The “cycle of terror” increases as the High Planning Council prepares to advance plans to build 1,985 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces and settlers carried out 2,350 attacks in the occupied West Bank last month in a “continuous cycle of terror,” according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC).
CRRC chief Mu’ayyad Sha’ban said on Wednesday that Israeli forces carried out 1,584 attacks – including direct physical attacks, the demolition of homes and the uprooting of olive trees – and that most of the violence was focused on the governorates of Ramallah (542), Nablus (412) and Hebron (401).
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The investigation, compiled in a monthly CRRC report titled Occupation Violations and Colonial Expansion Measures, also noted 766 attacks by settlers. The commission said they are expanding the settlements, which are illegal under international law, as part of what it called an “organized strategy that aims to displace the country’s indigenous people and impose a totally racist colonial regime.”
The report says settler attacks reached a new peak with most targeting the governorate of Ramallah (195), Nablus (179) and Hebron (126). Olive pickers were hardest hit by the attacks, according to the report, which said they were victims of “state terror” that had been “orchestrated in the dark backgrounds of the occupation government.”
He described cases of Israeli “vandalism and theft” carried out in collusion with Israeli soldiers who have seen the “uprooting, destruction and poisoning” of 1,200 olive trees in Hebron, Ramallah, Tubas, Qalqilya, Nablus and Bethlehem. During the violence, settlers have attempted to establish seven new outposts on Palestinian lands since October in the governorates of Hebron and Nablus.
For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees, an important Palestinian cultural symbol, throughout the West Bank as part of efforts by successive Israeli governments to seize Palestinian land and forcibly displace its residents.
The rise in Israeli violence comes amid expectations that Israel’s Higher Planning Council (HPC), part of the Israeli military’s Civil Administration that oversees the occupied West Bank, will meet on Wednesday to discuss the construction of 1,985 new settlement units in the West Bank.
The left-wing Israeli movement Peace Now said that 1,288 of the units would be deployed to two isolated settlements in the northern West Bank, namely Avnei Hefetz and Einav Plan.
He said the HPC had been holding weekly meetings since November last year to advance housing projects in the settlements, thereby normalizing and accelerating construction on land taken from the Palestinians.
Since the beginning of 2025, the HPC has pushed for a record 28,195 housing units, Peace Now said.
In August, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sparked international condemnation after saying plans to build thousands of homes as part of the proposed E1 settlement plan in the West Bank “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”
The E1 project, shelved for years amid opposition from the United States and its European allies, would connect occupied East Jerusalem to the existing illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim.
Push by the Israeli far-right to annex the West Bank would essentially end the possibility of implementing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as outlined in numerous United Nations resolutions.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has been adamant that it will not allow Israel to annex the occupied territory. US Vice President JD Vance, during a recent visit to Israel, said that Trump would oppose Israeli annexation of the West Bank and that it would not happen. Vance said upon leaving Israel: “If it was a political stunt, it’s very stupid, and I personally feel it is an insult.”
But the United States has done nothing to address Israel’s attacks and crackdowns on Palestinians in the West Bank while touting its ceasefire efforts in Gaza.
