Palestinian suffering in the West Bank is continuing in a systematic manner that reflects a dangerous deterioration in humanitarian, security, and political conditions.
Over recent years, the West Bank has ceased to be merely a venue for sporadic frictions or localised confrontations and has been transformed instead into a theatre of daily violence affecting nearly every Palestinian city, town, and village.
Palestinians today confront a complex set of pressures: the expansion of settlements, the deepening entrenchment of Israeli systems of control, shrinking prospects for any political breakthrough, and the escalating threat posed by organised settler violence that is implicitly enabled by segments of Israel’s decision-making establishment.
Identifying a serious and practical pathway to ending this suffering requires a precise understanding of the nature of the ongoing violence, of the policy framework that sustains it, and of the conditions necessary to halt it.
Settler violence in the West Bank has risen to unprecedented levels over the past two years, both in terms of the scale of attacks and the broad geography they now cover. These attacks include shootings, the burning of homes and farms, the destruction of property, the prevention of Palestinian farmers from accessing their land, and terrorising residents in multiple areas.
This violence is neither individual nor random; it is instead produced by a political and security environment that tolerates it, and at times incorporates it, into a broader vision aimed at expanding settlement areas and coercing Palestinians to leave regions Israel considers strategically significant.
The gravity of the situation is underscored by the failure of Israeli civilian and military institutions to take the necessary steps to stop this violence or to hold its perpetrators accountable in any meaningful way. Impunity has become the prevailing norm, reinforcing among settlers a sense that they can impose new facts on the ground without consequences.
The problem goes beyond weak deterrence: in multiple areas, armed elements from settler militias have participated in joint operations with the Israeli army as part of a recurring and deeply troubling phenomenon. These dynamics have effectively transformed the settlers into a parallel security actor capable of directly shaping the lives of Palestinians and the character of Israeli control in the West Bank.
Any serious effort to end Palestinian suffering must therefore begin with changing this reality by enforcing the rule of law within Israel itself, compelling settlers to respect legal boundaries, and treating their attacks as crimes that must be investigated and prosecuted without exception.
Yet, ending the settler violence cannot be achieved without addressing the political structures that enable its escalation. The current Israeli government includes political factions that have publicly called for expanding settlements, encouraging the presence of armed Jewish groups in rural Palestinian areas, and framing Palestinians in the West Bank as “a foe to be subdued” rather than as a population living under occupation.
This political context obstructs any rational pathway to reducing violence and fuels further unilateral steps that undermine the prospects of any future settlement. For this reason, coordinated international pressure from Western governments, the United Nations, and Arab states with political and security ties to Israel has become a necessity.
The aim is not to impose unrealistic conditions on Israel, but to recalibrate its behaviour in the West Bank in line with international law and to prevent the situation from sliding into a broader explosion that could persist for years.
It is important to emphasise that the international community does possess real political and legal tools it can deploy, foremost among them linking any security or economic cooperation with Israel to its compliance with reducing settler violence, ending land confiscation, and respecting Palestinians’ basic rights.
The Arab states, including those that have normalised their relations with Israel, can also play an influential role by applying coordinated diplomatic pressure and making clear that the sustainability of such relations cannot coexist with daily violence that deprives Palestinians in the West Bank of any sense of safety. Experience shows that unified Arab pressure can rebalance elements of the conflict and restore the humanitarian and rights-based dimensions that international policy has sidelined in recent years.
On the Palestinian side, ending the suffering also requires institutional unification and the revitalisation of political and diplomatic efforts. The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ability to assert effective governance in the West Bank has eroded due not only to the intensification of the occupation, but also to internal political and economic crises.
Despite these constraints, the PA can rebuild its institutional capacity and increase its presence in villages and rural areas most targeted by settler violence through civilian protection initiatives, legal follow-up, and the systematic documentation of violations. The activation of tools of peaceful popular resistance such as community protection committees, widespread presence in threatened areas, and international legal advocacy can form an effective lever for curbing settler encroachment.
What is required is not a military confrontation, but the rebuilding of Palestinian society’s capacity for resilience and for imposing political and public-opinion costs on Israel whenever settler violence escalates.
International and independent Israeli human-rights organisations can also play an important role in documenting violations and exposing the abuses Palestinians face. This role requires political, legal, and media support, and efforts to criminalise or restrict these organisations must be resisted.
The information gathered by human-rights investigators is crucial in building legal cases before international courts and in revealing to global audiences the reality on the ground.
Ultimately, ending Palestinian suffering in the West Bank requires progress along three interdependent tracks: an immediate and genuine halt to settler violence through binding legal and security measures within Israel; coordinated international pressure that restores the primacy of international law and imposes political costs for the continuation of the occupation; and the reconstruction of Palestinian capacities for resilience, peaceful resistance, and internal institutional coherence to ensure effective protection for the population.
When these tracks converge, a political opening may emerge that can return Palestinians, Israelis, and the broader international community to the negotiation table, seeking a future that guarantees rights, ends the occupation, and prevents the consolidation of an apartheid reality.
The path to ending this suffering is neither simple nor swift. But it begins with a clear and essential step: stopping settler violence. Without that, all attempts at de-escalation, negotiation, or confidence-building will remain futile, and Palestinians in the West Bank will continue to live under constant threat.
If, however, the international community, Israel, and the Palestinian leadership take simultaneous and serious action, the possibility of transformative change becomes real and the West Bank can become a space for hope rather than a landscape of violence and daily violations.
The writer is a political scientist and former MP. He is currently director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: