They set new records for violence in 2025, and this year is shaping up to be even worse: Settlers have wounded more than 260 Palestinians across the West Bank so far, tripling the monthly average since 2023. Alongside military closures, these attacks have displaced over 1,500 residents in three months, nearly as many as were uprooted throughout last year. And since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, settlers have killed six Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the PA Health Ministry—all of them inside or adjacent to Area B territory.

In response to a request for comment, an Israeli military spokesperson stated: “The IDF’s mission is to maintain the security of all residents of the [West Bank]. The IDF Central Command, including the Civil Administration, is working to evacuate illegal outposts in Area B, out of a clear security need.”

The statement continued: “The IDF has concentrated forces in the areas of friction in order to reduce violent incidents as much as possible. The IDF strongly condemns incidents of this type, which result in harm to innocent people and undermine security stability in the area.”

Yet soldiers who served in the West Bank have testified to the de facto policy inside the Israeli military that facilitates settler violence. “You see tons of incidents—settlers throwing stones, riots, homes being burned—and they simply allow it,” a reservist who served in a coordination role in a West Bank command post during the Gaza war told +972, Local Call, and The Nation. Investigations, he said, typically follow only when a killing risks causing a wider escalation—and even then, “the frustration is only from a security perspective, not to prevent [similar cases] in the future or to deter.”

Another soldier who served in an infantry brigade in the West Bank during the war, and later testified about his experience to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, described what he saw as a “very close” relationship between the settlers and army. “There was a farm [settler outpost] in our sector; we conducted drills there, joint missions,” he said. “When there’s an event of settler violence, which happens a lot, the police are supposed to come. In the best case, the army stands aside during settler violence; in the worst case, it takes part. That happened with us, too.”

This investigation by +972, Local Call, and The Nation narrows in on a dozen Palestinian communities in the central West Bank—between Ramallah and Nablus—that have found themselves on the front lines of the settler expansion into Area B. 

Based on satellite imagery and mapping analysis as well as testimonies from Palestinian landowners and officials, accounts from victims of settler violence, and an internal settlers’ document, the investigation demonstrates how new outposts are pushing further and further into the West Bank, advancing Israeli government policy to displace Palestinians and consolidate Israeli control over ever-greater swaths of the occupied territory.

As Smotrich vowed at the funeral of a prominent settler activist who was hit by a car on Saturday that was apparently driven by a Palestinian: “We will erase the lines, the demarcations, and the letters. We will settle our land in all its parts.” 

The Palestinian village of Al-Mughayyir lies about 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah. While most of its residents live in a section of the village that falls within Area B, the majority of its lands are in Area C—including 42,000 dunams of grazing areas and farmlands that have been taken over by settlers. The village is now surrounded on nearly all sides by eight outposts, including one inside Area B.

The Israeli army has closed the main entrance to Al-Mughayyir from the east for over two years, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Last August, following an incident in which a Palestinian gunman allegedly opened fire on Israeli settlers grazing sheep on the village’s land, the army worked with settlers to seal off the town completely. Over the course of the three-day siege, they uprooted thousands of olive trees, stormed homes, and dug trenches around the village to make it even harder for people to come and go. Since then, settlers have grazed their flocks on village land almost daily.

Local activist Rabee Abu Na’im described these events as part of what he saw as a deliberate strategy. For two years, he said, authorities had been “closing off the village and tightening control over it as much as possible,” because it is “the last village remaining in the Ramallah area that borders the Jordan Valley”—the West Bank’s eastern flank over which Israel is rapidly consolidating control.

“The policy of population expulsion is a pre-planned strategy,” he added. “Now they are advancing toward the villages between the valley and other areas, like Al-Mughayyir and Duma.” Referring to the trenches dug around the village, he added: “It’s a total siege; it’s like we’re in prison here.”

Since October 2023, the army has killed four residents of Al-Mughayyir, including, most recently, 14-year-old Mohammed Naasan. His father, Sa’ad, said Mohammed had been standing near him at the end of Friday prayers on Jan. 16, when a soldier fired from a jeep about 100 meters away. “The bullet exited through his back. He died on the spot,” he said. After the family erected a mourning tent, he added, “the army came and took over a house opposite us. They didn’t want us to receive visitors, so they fired tear gas and live ammunition.”

Marzouk Abu Na’im, head of the village council, said settlers—with army backing—now control nearly all of Al-Mughayyir’s dunams of land, of which 1,000 are in Area B. “The army was not absent; the settlers did not act alone. It backed them,” he said. “Today we are not allowed to reach our land to cultivate it.”

The impact, he continued, is both economic and psychological: “People no longer have any sense of security here, not even for their children. There’s no such thing as childhood here anymore.” Conversations revolve around raids and arrests, he said. “People only talk about ‘The settlers came, the settlers left, the army arrived, the army raided, this one was arrested, that one was killed, this one was injured.’” In the end, he added, “the pressure is a policy of expulsion, nothing less.”

One of the outposts creating that pressure is Or Nachman, erected in Area B in 2024 and positioned to block the main road between Al-Mughayyir and the nearby town of Turmus Ayya (which settlers effectively closed off in October 2023). The army has evacuated and demolished the outpost on several occasions—most recently on March 11—but it hasn’t close the area, which allows the settlers to rebuild each time, often within hours. Palestinian residents of the area are now forced to use the road through Khirbet Abu Falah, a nearby village where settlers have attacked cars, homes, and olive groves.

Before the olive harvest last autumn, settlers cut down dozens of trees on land belonging to Samir Shuman, 49, from Khirbet Abu Falah. “They came at night, when everyone was asleep. Even if the army was there, it would have protected them,” he said. “As you can see,” he added, gesturing to a field of naked trees, “there are no olives and there won’t be any oil this year.” ‘Anyone who tries to move is shot at’: Turmus Ayya

Turmus Ayya is a Palestinian town in Area B that lies east of Ramallah and is home to many residents who hold U.S. citizenship. It has also been a victim of violence by the settlers of Or Nachman. 

Last October, a band of 100 settlers from the outpost attacked olive harvesters, severely wounding 53-year-old Afaf Abu Alia. One participant in the assault, Ariel Dahari, was arrested and indicted; dozens of others were not. 

More recently, on March 8, settlers descended from Or Nachman into Khirbet Abu Falah and shot dead two Palestinian men. A third suffered a cardiac arrest when Israeli military forces arrived soon after and fired tear gas.

Settlers from another new outpost, known as HaNekuda BaEmek (“The Point in the Valley”), also regularly harass residents of Turmus Ayya. Established in 2024, the outpost is located on the town’s agricultural lands that fall within Area B. Its founder, Amishav Melat—who previously lived in the nearby outpost of Geulat Zion (“The Redemption of Zion”)—told Ynet in 2020 that settlers study Areas A, B, and C “to blur that division and push forward as much as possible.” He added, “We establish outposts [and] stretch the boundaries of settlement.”

Descending from HaNekuda BaEmek, settlers graze livestock in Turmus Ayya’s fields and orchards. According to the town’s council head Lafi Adeeb, residents have effectively lost access to some 8,000 dunams, roughly half of which lies in Area C and half in Area B. “When you reach land in Area B, they tell you, ‘This is a closed military zone,’” he said.

Adeeb described daily attacks in the valley. Although the outpost itself sits in Area B, the Israeli military has declared the surrounding area to be a closed military zone. “Any resident who enters is attacked. No one stops the settler gangs,” he said, arguing that they operate with official backing from the army and “are trying to take over as much land as possible.”

Awad Abu Samra, a 59-year-old landowner and activist from Turmus Ayya, can see the settlers’ strategy playing out on the ground. After expelling shepherding communities, he said, “the settlers advanced toward Palestinian rural areas.” There, they burned and looted agricultural structures; now, he said, settlers are targeting homes at the town’s edge. The outpost sitting on Turmus Ayya’s land lies just 300 meters from the last house in the town.

“Anyone who tries to move in the area is shot at [by settlers],” he said. “Landowners are completely prevented from reaching their lands. The settler is the one who controls what happens. He gives orders to the soldier [and] the police officer.’”

The closed military zone, Abu Samra explained, is not being enforced equally. “A ‘military zone,’ as we understand it, is supposed to be an area that no one enters—not settlers, not Palestinians, no one. But it becomes a military zone only for Palestinians.” In one instance during the olive harvest, a settler arrived with a printed notice and handed it to soldiers, who then dispersed Turmus Ayya residents. 

On a recent tour of village land, Adeeb suggested that the distinction between Areas B and C no longer appears to matter. “They uprooted hundreds of olive trees here. During the harvest they attacked us in Area B, didn’t allow anyone to remain, and took the olives we had harvested.”

He pointed to his own four-dunam plot, planted in the 1990s with 80 olive trees. “When I arrived, I found they had been uprooted by a bulldozer,” he said. “This is the beginning of a large-scale expulsion in the West Bank. The [settlers] are taking over Areas C and B without any prior authorization, and they receive backing from the army, the police, and [Israeli] ministers [Itamar] Ben Gvir and Smotrich.” ‘Wherever you go, they follow you’: Duma 

On Oct. 18, 2023, settlers expelled the shepherding community of Ein Al-Rashash, located in Area C east of Ramallah. This was part of a campaign that had begun before the war, when settlers, eager to consolidate control over roughly 150,000 dunams between the Allon Road and the Jordan Valley, had started working to remove Bedouin communities in the area.

Originally from the Ein Gedi region near the Dead Sea, many families in Ein Al-Rashash were first displaced in 1948, and then several times again before their expulsion in 2023. After leaving Ein Al-Rashash, some moved a few kilometers north, to the outskirts of the town of Duma in Area C. At the time, there were no outposts there.

“We thought we’d stay here for 10 to 15 years,” said 22-year-old Raed Zawahreh. “We didn’t think the settlers would come here either. But wherever you go, they follow you.” 

In mid-2025, settlers set up an outpost called Havat Giborei David (“The Heroes of David Farm”) several hundred meters from his family’s home. It is part of a chain of new outposts surrounding Duma in Area C that were established after 19-year-old settler David Libi was killed in Gaza in May 2025 while operating engineering equipment for an army contractor.

An internal settlers’ document obtained by +972, Local Call, and The Nation reveals the purpose of these outposts: “To guard the territory overlooking the Councils Junction, to maintain contiguity to the Jordan Valley north of the Allon axis and east of Route 5 (Road 505), and to guard the open area between the road and the village of Majdal (Bani Fadil).” The “open area” refers to agricultural and grazing lands used by Palestinian communities. 

The document further states that, in the case of any Palestinian “movement northward from the Duma access road, an armed person must be alerted.” This directive effectively renders any movement beyond the village’s built-up area a security threat.

According to the map attached to the document, a planned road linking Havat Giborei David to the outpost Malachei HaShalom (“Angels of Peace”) and its northern satellites, will seal off Duma from the east.

Since the establishment of Havat Giborei David, the Palestinian families living on the outskirts of Duma have endured near-daily harassment. Last August, an off-duty soldier shot dead Tamim Dawabsheh, 35, after residents confronted settlers entering their land. Many families have sent women and children to live in the town of Duma, which falls within Area B.

“They came on foot or on ATVs, entered with their sheep into the homes, and threw stones and frightened the children,” recalled Basem Ka’abneh, 35, who at one point covered his home with barbed wire in an attempt to slow settler incursions. “They told us to leave. If we left, they would take all the land up to the town.” 

Left-wing international and Israeli activists maintained a round-the-clock “protective presence” at the site following a request from residents, which Ka’abneh said “slowed the attacks a bit.” He said they initially contacted police and the army in the months after the outpost appeared, “but the army was angry that we called, so we stopped.”

Calls recorded by an activist from early December illustrate the pattern of disregard. During one settler incursion, a police officer told an activist: “As police, we can’t enter without the army, and the army didn’t arrive, so we couldn’t go in.”

In a separate call concerning a different incident, when an activist reported that “settlers here inside a residential area” were “terrorizing the Palestinians,” a soldier responded that “no one lives in Bedouiya”—the army’s term for these communities on the outskirts of Duma—insisting the land was empty.

According to one soldier who served in the Jordan Valley, “the vibe is indifference to any Palestinian report.” When settlers call, on the other hand, “everyone jumps within a second.” He recounted an incident in which a settler opened fire during a dispute with a Palestinian resident. Commanders were slow to respond and their main concern, he said, “was that it could reach the media.” He added: “Of course, if it were the other way around, they would have rushed to the scene.”

During the first days of the current war with Iran, settlers displaced the remaining residents of the Palestinian shepherding community of Shkara, east of Duma. According to activists, settlers first intensified attacks on the encampments, after which the army declared the area a closed military zone. Activists told +972, Local Call, and The Nation that, in the days before the army issued the order, soldiers had mapped the locations where activists were staying in the encampment. With observers barred from entering, the communities no longer had outside protection and soon left the area.  

Ka’abneh and his family were among those forced to leave. “We left, and the next day we were given a three-hour window [by the army] to return and collect our belongings. Everything was smashed, and equipment was stolen,” he testified. 

“Our home and land are gone. We can’t go back there because the settlers are still in the area. They scattered us; each family moved to a different place in the village. We managed to hold on there for eight months since the outpost was established only thanks to the activists who stood by us.” 

They moved into a rented home inside the town of Duma. But in the days following their arrival, the mosque adjacent to their new residence was set on fire, and graffiti reading “From Nahman’s synagogue” alongside a Star of David was sprayed on its walls—apparently in retaliation for Israel’s decision to demolish the Or Nahman outpost at the beginning of March. (Settlers have since rebuilt it, without interference from the army.)

Today, the town of Duma has only one entrance to the Allon Road, and it is controlled by a yellow gate erected by the army. Five outposts now surround it. Activists fear the town could soon be effectively sealed off, prompting residents to leave permanently or remain only intermittently. 

According to Duma’s mayor, Hussein Dawabsheh, settlers have taken control of or blocked access to roughly 17,000 of the village’s 18,500 dunams, including land in Area B. The urban area of the village is just 940 dunams.

“No area is safe from them—not C, not B, and not even A,” Dawabsheh said. “Palestinian land has become something that blows away in the wind, under full control of the Israeli government.

“The goal is the complete expulsion of the Palestinians,” he added. “Even the settlement’s security personnel say we need to be dealt with like Gaza.” ‘Nothing stops them’: Aqraba

North of Duma lie the Palestinian town of Aqraba and the village of Majdal Bani Fadil, both in Area B. (Majdal Bani Fadil was one of the villages mentioned in the internal settler planning document +972, Local Call, and The Nation obtained). Until recently, they were connected by Route 5077, but after the establishment of the Rappaport Farm outpost last year, settlers dug up the road and damaged its infrastructure. Travel between the two communities now requires a 15- to 30-minute detour.

More direct violence soon followed. In early August, settlers shot dead 24-year-old Mu’in Asfar near Aqraba. Seven other Palestinians were wounded. In video footage from before the shooting, a young settler can be heard telling residents: “All of Aqraba is going to be in our hands. Pack your things and leave. You saw what happened in Gaza.”

Ghadad Nasser, 42, who works for the Aqraba Municipality, said Asfar had been harvesting okra near the road when settlers arrived. “They came down and killed him and wounded others,” he said. “The army and the settlers say, ‘[Area] C is ours,’ but now they’re also going after anyone who reaches Area B. They’re trying to scare people away from going down to their land.”

Southwest of Aqraba, across Road 505, several new outposts have appeared on Palestinian land. Shortly after establishing one last October, settlers attempted to seize a house under construction in Area B belonging to 57-year-old Ahed Khatib.

“I started building the house in 2020,” Khatib recalled. As olive harvest season approached last autumn, settlers began harassing his family and eventually expelled them at gunpoint. “We called the army and the police,” he said, “but they didn’t come. They only claimed they were on the way.”

This year, in early February, settlers repeatedly hung an Israeli flag on his roof. Each time the family removed it, the settlers replaced it. “We fixed the door and installed a new lock, then they came again, removed the door entirely, and hung the flag,” he explained.

During a visit by +972, Local Call, and The Nation, solidarity activists again removed the flag; settlers returned within minutes and put it back. Soldiers who arrived said they were there only to disperse a “gathering” or “demonstration”—referring to the activists and residents—and prevented Khatib from approaching his own house.

“[The settlers] bring sheep into the olive groves. They have no commitment to any law, and nothing stops them,” Khatib said. “The house is in Area B and I have all the permits. They’re trying to take over Area B, especially the houses on the outskirts.”

Across from one of the outposts stands a small hut that once served as an agricultural center run by Palestinian storyteller Hamza Al-Aqrabawi, who drowned in the Nile during a visit to Egypt in December. Friends have continued to work the land, but in early February, settlers attacked them with tear gas. “We went down to our land, and a settler entered the area and sprayed us with tear gas,” Abdullah Diriyeh, 39, said. “The army arrived but did nothing.”

Just outside Aqraba lies the remains of the village of Yanoun—a grim portent of what the settlers hope to do to the town. Yanoun, which consisted of centuries-old stone structures with olive groves accessed through Aqraba, falls within Area C. For two decades, its residents endured violence by settlers who lived in the settlement of Itamar—established in 1984—and its outposts. In the early 2000s, international activists maintained a 24-hour protective presence there.

This past December, after months of intensified harassment and road restrictions, the remaining families left. By then, outposts had fully encircled the village; settlers had taken over agricultural buildings, raised flags, and blocked access to olive groves.

Soldiers told activists that the access road—located in Area B—was a “closed military zone or security area, and entry into the community itself is forbidden.” ‘They’re working according to a map’: Sinjil

In the town of Sinjil and nearby Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharqiya and Al-Sharqiya, residents describe a familiar sequence of events: In April 2025, settlers established an outpost on a strategic hill along Route 60—private land that falls within Area B—and began attacking.

Settlers descend into Sinjil almost daily, attacking Palestinians and setting homes and vehicles on fire. The month the outpost was established, 48-year-old Wael Ghafari died of a heart attack after inhaling smoke and tear gas when soldiers arrived and pushed back residents who had come to defend their land.

By the early summer, settlers had moved the outpost to the nearby Jabal Al-Batin area, located in Area A. In July, when residents of Sinjil came out to confront a group of 30 settlers approaching the town from the outpost, the settlers began attacking them. Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, was beaten to death; eyewitnesses said he lay wounded for hours, as the army blocked paramedics from reaching him. The second victim, Mohammad Razek Hussein Al-Shalabi, 23, was shot dead, and his body was found later that night in nearby olive groves. His family said his body showed gunshot wounds, signs of strangulation, and bruising.

Israeli forces have dismantled the unnamed outpost near Sinjil several times, but on each occasion settlers have quickly rebuilt it. At the same time, the Israeli army erected a barbed wire fence along Route 60 earlier last year, turning Sinjil into an open-air prison. For residents inside the village, the fence has cut off 8,000 dunams of their land, while dozens of Palestinian homes on the opposite side of the fence have been left more exposed to settler attacks. 

Activist Ayed Ghafari said that the settlers seem to be “working according to a map, in order to cut Palestinian villages off and turn them into isolated islands.” The strategy, he said, does not discriminate between Areas A, B, and C. “They empty the land and take it. Between every district there is a settlement bloc. In the West Bank, every village has become a prison for its residents.”

“In 80 percent or 90 percent of cases,” he explained, “the army does the work for the settlers”—typically by arriving at the scene of a settler attack and immediately issuing a closed military zone order. “At the same time,” he continued, “they allow settlers to enter via side roads, bring equipment, and build homes. But if Palestinians try to reach the area, the army blocks them.” ‘They burned and broke me’: Outskirts of Ramallah and Nablus

Just a few kilometers from central Ramallah, settlers have been actively setting up new outposts. On privately owned Palestinian land between the town of Silwad and the village of Yabrud, settlers established an outpost in early 2025 that halted construction of a planned Palestinian neighborhood, forcing several families who had lived there for years to leave. The land, too, is in Area B.

For Palestinian farmers in these two communities, the outpost has effectively cut off access to much of their land. During last year’s olive harvest, young settlers were seen driving freely through the center of Yabrud. Along the dirt road leading toward the abandoned construction site, a burned-out car marks the site of an early attack.

After settlers blocked off entry to one farmer’s land—a plot passed down from his grandfather—he was unable to visit it for nearly a year. “When I arrived, settlers took my car,” he told +972, Local Call, and The Nation. “Others had six vehicles burned here. Now people are afraid to come.”

In October, near Nablus, settlers established another outpost on land in Area B belonging to the village of Kafr Qaddum and the town of Beit Lid. Several violent incidents have already followed.

At the start of the olive harvest in October, settlers assaulted Hikmat Al-Shteiwi, a 51-year-old farmer from Kafr Qaddum, and set his vehicle on fire. He was hospitalized with a complex skull fracture and a brain hemorrhage, spending about two weeks sedated and on a ventilator. 

“They burned and broke me,” Al-Shtewi told +972, Local Call, and The Nation, describing the attack from his home, where he now sits in a wheelchair—his son helping him drink water.

He had come to harvest olives on his land when a group of around 10 settlers came at him with sticks and stones. First they beat him, then dragged him to the car, which they proceeded to set on fire. “I tried to get out but couldn’t,” he recalled. “I was close to death. I was in intensive care for 16 days. My family was waiting for news that I had died, but I survived.” 

Now, his family must assist with the most basic movements and activities. “I can’t do anything on my own; they must lift me, move me, bathe me, change my clothes,” he explained.

His relative, 56-year-old Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shteiwi, was also attacked. “Settlers sprayed me with pepper spray and beat me with clubs, but I managed to escape,” he told +972, Local Call, and The Nation. “We found [Hikmat] after half an hour in the car, unconscious and bleeding from everywhere. The settlers thought he was dead, so they left him. The car seat was burned; they pulled out the foam so it would burn faster.

Weeks later, on Nov. 11, settlers in the area torched trucks, agricultural fields, and several buildings, including a dairy factory belonging to the Al-Juneidi company in Beit Lid, which employs thousands across the West Bank. Soldiers were also attacked during the incident, briefly sparking public outcry in Israel over settler violence before the attention faded.

Although the outpost was formally evacuated last month, settlers still visit the site almost daily. As Al-Shteiwi noted, residents have suffered dearly for trying to hold fast to their land. “We paid a heavy price. Young men had bones broken; many of us ended up in the hospital. But we are prepared for that to protect the land and remove the settlement from here.”

In response to our investigation, the Israeli Civil Administration referred us to the army’s statement and added that it has no responsibility over Area B, stating: “The authority for enforcement decisions there lies with the Central Command.”

In a statement to +972, Local Call, and The Nation, Israel Police said: “We would like to emphasize that the police forces are operating by virtue of their authority in the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] region, and their entry into Areas A and B is permitted only with military escort. As a rule, upon receiving a report at the police station, the forces, together with IDF forces, work to reach the scene, collect testimonies and collect evidence and findings, and an investigation is opened to clarify the circumstances of the incident.

“A joint mission command is currently being operated between the relevant bodies, the goal of which is to thwart and prevent incidents of extremist violence in the Judea and Samaria region,” the statement continued. “This is in parallel with the determined and intensified activity to arrest, interrogate and bring to justice those who harm security in the region. The Israel Police will continue this activity with all the means at its disposal in order to maintain the safety and security of the public.”

Eran Maoz and Avishay Mohar assisted with this report.