For decades, settler attacks in the West Bank were largely concentrated in “Area C,” under full Israeli control. But since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, violence has spread deeper, reaching “Area B” and reshaping life across the territory.
The assaults, carried out day and night, have coincided with a surge in settlement activity. There are now 243 new settlement outposts that did not exist before the 1993 Oslo accords, and 129 additional “shepherding outposts” established since October 7, 2023, alone.
Officially, Israeli settlements cover 3.6% of the West Bank. But their de facto footprint — including roads, security zones and areas of influence — extends to nearly 10%, according to Palestinian monitoring groups.
Nature reserves are also part of the land Israel has moved to place under its control as part of a sovereignty plan driven by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
In what analysts say could be the most decisive step yet toward blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, Smotrich in late August 2025 secured final approval for the long-stalled “E1” project.
The plan, frozen for decades due to international pressure, received a green light from the Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council, an arm of Israel’s Defense Ministry.
A Village Turned Into a Cage
In Sinjil, a town of 9,000 people about 21 km north of Ramallah, residents say daily life has come to resemble imprisonment. Fences, gates, settlements and military outposts ring the community, leaving villagers hemmed in and fearful.
The scars of a July 11 attack are still visible. On that day, settlers killed two young Palestinian men in one of the deadliest assaults since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The victims were not from Sinjil but from the nearby town of al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya. They had come to help defend their neighbors when hundreds of settlers stormed the village.
“It was a wide-scale assault,” said Mohammad Alwan, coordinator of the Popular Committee Against Settlements. “More than 300 settlers gathered in the mountains and attacked the village. It was a tough battle. Neighbors rushed to defend each other.”
Two young men went missing during the clashes. Hours later, villagers found 22-year-old Saif Musallat dead in a valley. “He had just come from America to visit Palestine ...
They hit him until he died,” Alwan said, his voice breaking. “The bruises were all over his body.”
The second victim, Mohammad Shalabi, was shot dead. “Criminals and savages were unleashed on us,” Alwan added.
Alwan, who has lived through decades of settler attacks, said the brutality has escalated sharply since Oct. 7. “After October they built fences, put up gates and seized the rest of the land - 8,000 out of 14,000 dunams. Look how they turned the village into a cage.”
Gates, Closures and Economic Strain
Beyond the human toll, villagers describe economic suffocation. Mechanic Gharib Khalil’s shop lies just behind a yellow gate sealing the village entrance. “Since they put the gate up a year ago, business collapsed. People can’t reach me anymore,” he said.
Nearby, Abed al-Nasser Alwan stood by his broken-down truck trapped on the other side of the gate. “It looks open, but cameras are everywhere. If you move it, they shoot you or arrest you. We’re stuck.”
Palestinian officials say these restrictions are part of a deliberate policy. The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission counts 898 military checkpoints and gates across the West Bank, including 146 added since Oct. 7, 2023.
“These barriers reflect Israel’s closure policy since 1967,” said Amir Dawood, the commission’s publishing director. “They are designed to create a new geographic reality - one of exclusion and surveillance.”
Boundaries Drawn with Fire
The violence has spread to neighboring Kafr Malik, where settlers killed four men in July. Posters of the victims cover village walls, alongside slogans of defiance. Settlements loom from the hilltops above, expanding since Oct. 7.
“From there, they attack the village,” said activist Montaser al-Maliki. “Before October, attacks happened, but not like this. Now they are larger, more organized, and more violent.”
Almost daily, footage circulates of settlers blocking roads or pelting Palestinian cars with stones.
The Vanishing Oslo Map
Maps of the West Bank illustrate how Oslo’s partition into Areas A, B and C has eroded.
Area A, once under full Palestinian control, has become a patchwork of isolated enclaves.
“They’ve built a state within a state,” said Issa Zboun, head of GIS at the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem. “Instead of giving Palestinians their promised state, they took the land and turned it into a settlers’ state.”
Figures compiled by Palestinian groups show the transformation:
1967: 69 settlements, 98,000 settlers, covering 0.2% of the West Bank.
1993 (Oslo Accords): 172 settlements, 248,000 settlers, covering 1.2%.
2025: 200 official settlements, 243 outposts — including 129 built after Oct. 7 — housing more than 940,000 settlers.
While settlements officially cover 3.6% of the West Bank, their effective footprint — including security zones, bypass roads and areas of influence — reaches nearly 10%.
Zboun said Israel once needed laws to seize land for settlements. “Today they do it without orders, without announcements, without laws,” he said.
In his office, Zboun displayed maps showing how every major Palestinian city is surrounded by settlements and bypass roads. “They turned Area A into isolated islands,” he said. “They’ve built something larger than the Palestinian state Oslo promised.”
For villagers like those in Sinjil and Kafr Malik, the map is redrawn not with ink but with blood. Boundaries, they say, are now “drawn with fire.”
Restricted Zones for the Palestinian Authority
Palestinian security forces are formally allowed to access parts of Areas B and C of the West Bank only with Israeli coordination. Yet even when entry is possible, analysts and residents say it is unthinkable for Palestinian officers to confront armed settlers or the Israeli army directly.
Israel’s military is often present during settler raids, ostensibly to keep order, but Palestinians say soldiers routinely shield settlers rather than restrain them. Many Palestinians have been killed during these attacks, with no record of Israeli law enforcement prosecuting settlers beyond brief detentions.
US Pressure Eased Under Trump
Since the start of the occupation in 1967, no Israeli settler has been jailed for killing Palestinians in West Bank attacks, despite periodic US pressure. The Biden administration sought to curb settler violence by imposing sanctions on settler leaders and their political backers. But President Donald Trump revoked those sanctions on his first day in office, a move that emboldened settler leaders and the Israeli defense minister to scrap a policy allowing administrative detention of violent settlers.
Trump’s arrival in power marked a turning point for both Israel’s right-wing leaders and the settler movement, who viewed his presidency as a rare chance to entrench Israeli sovereignty across the West Bank.
The period after Trump’s election saw what Palestinians describe as “unprecedented terror.” Settler raids became more frequent, larger, and more violent.
According to The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, Israel carried out 11,280 attacks in the first half of 2025, of which 2,154 were by settler militias, killing six Palestinians.
The Trump administration remained silent even after high-profile killings, including that of Musallat.
Only after Musallat’s family launched legal action and US media spotlighted the case did US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, call for accountability.
This was a criminal and terrorist act, Huckabee said, before visiting the nearby Christian town of Taybeh, where settlers had recently torched an old cemetery.
Despite his words - calling the attacks “absolute terrorism” and the desecration of holy sites a “crime against humanity” - no arrests were made, and settlers continued their assaults, including fresh raids on Taybeh.
The Desert Raids
Settler attacks have also spread to remote desert communities near Bethlehem, in what locals say is a campaign of intimidation.
In the village of al-Minya, council head Zayed Kawazba pointed to burned-out cars as evidence of recent raids. “They can come at any time,” he said. “Wherever they go, destruction follows.”
Nearby Kisan and the desert hamlet of Deir al-Ahmar have also faced near-daily violence. Residents describe settlers beating villagers, burning homes, killing livestock and then accusing Palestinians of theft.
“Before Oct. 7, the attacks were limited, but afterwards the orders came,” said Adnan Abayat of Deir al-Ahmar, showing a scar from a settler beating. “Now they are relentless. People can’t defend themselves, many have already left.”
A Secret Plan in Plain Sight
Palestinians and rights groups say these raids are not random but part of a broader Israeli strategy led by Smotrich, who also holds sweeping powers over the West Bank’s Civil Administration.
Since being appointed in 2022, Smotrich has overseen what critics call the most dramatic transformation of West Bank governance since 1967. By transferring powers once reserved for the Israeli military to civilian officials loyal to him, Smotrich has blurred the line between military occupation and outright annexation.
Though Israel denies officially annexing the West Bank, Smotrich has openly declared his aim of blocking any Palestinian state and entrenching Jewish settlement. A leaked recording captured him calling the process “a dramatic shift that changes the DNA of the system.”
In August 2025, Smotrich secured final approval for the long-stalled E1 settlement plan, linking Jerusalem to the vast Maale Adumim bloc. The project, frozen for decades under international pressure, will effectively bisect the West Bank, severing north from south and crippling the territorial viability of a Palestinian state.
“This is historic,” Smotrich said. “The Palestinian state has been erased from the table — not with slogans but with deeds. Every settlement, every house, every neighborhood is another nail in the coffin of that dangerous idea.”
Israeli rights group B’Tselem warned that the move cements a system of apartheid by entrenching “a bi-national state of separation.”
The E1 approval followed a July 23 Knesset vote endorsing annexation of the West Bank - condemned by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas alike. Netanyahu framed the decision as “a response to Western recognition plans for Palestine” and vowed to accelerate settlement expansion.
Infrastructure work on E1 could begin within months, with housing construction starting as early as next year, Israeli officials said.
B’Tselem argues that Israel has already created a dual system of governance in the occupied West Bank, with separate legal regimes for settlers and Palestinians, amounting to apartheid.
Smotrich has made little effort to disguise his intentions. His 2017 manifesto openly called for dismantling the Palestinian Authority, preventing statehood, and forcing Palestinians to choose between emigration, second-class citizenship, or resistance.
In two years of the current government, observers say Smotrich has delivered a historic shift, consolidating Israeli civilian rule over occupied land and accelerating settlement expansion at a pace unseen in decades.
As settlers push deeper into Palestinian villages and deserts, residents say they are left with only three choices: flee, submit, or resist.
“Their plan is to erase us,” said Abayat. “They beat us, burn our homes, kill our sheep and the world says nothing. We have nothing left but survival.”
