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settler violence
Palestine Defenders Say Western Nations' New Sanctions on Israeli Settlers 'Not Enough'
"These are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people," said one group.
Jun 09, 2026
While some advocates for Palestinian rights welcomed Tuesday's joint announcement by a group of Western nations of new sanctions targeting "extremist" Israeli settlers amid their escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the illegally occupied West Bank, many others called the measures inadequate and urged stronger action against Israel's government for enabling settler violence.
The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement announcing "coordinated action to introduce sanctions and other measures to hold extremist settlers accountable for the horrific levels of settler violence against Palestinian civilians."
France joined the other four nations and New Zealand—which is coordinating sanctions with the group—in banning Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza and lives in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, from entering their countries. Members of the coalition also slapped an entry ban on four leaders of settler organizations and 21 individual settlers.
"We are today imposing new sanctions against those responsible for intensifying colonization and violence in the West Bank," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on social media. "Smotrich actively promotes the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly claims, the creation of new settlements in the West Bank, the recolonization of Gaza, the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and its deleterious consequences on the Palestinian population."
British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper said Tuesday during a speech in Parliament that “settler expansion and violence is illegal and a fundamental threat to the viability of a two-state solution, and to long-term peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
"I have strengthened our business risk guidance to make it clear and unambiguous: If you are a British citizen or business, you should not conduct any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements,” Cooper added.
Coalition countries previously banned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entry. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has reportedly requested arrest warrants for Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for the crime of apartheid related to their plans, backed by the Trump administration in the United States, to expand illegal settler colonies in the West Bank and annex the occupied territory. The ICC issued warrants in 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
"Extremist violent settlers, with the backing of their supporters, continue to attack Palestinians and abuse their human rights," Tuesday's announcement states. "They use violence to displace Palestinians, destroy property, and perpetuate the illegal settlement enterprise, undermining the viability of the state of Palestine and the prospects for peaceful coexistence."
"For too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the government of Israel," the ministers said. "In some cases, settler violence takes place under the protection of Israel’s security forces. We continue to urge the government of Israel to take action to ensure meaningful accountability for violence in the West Bank."
The statement noted that the five countries "have all taken the historic decision to recognize the state of Palestine, reflecting the rights of the Palestinian people and as part of our common efforts to protect the viability of the two-state solution."
"Today, we are acting together again in support of the same objectives," the ministers asserted. "We stand ready to take more action if the government of Israel does not take urgent steps to address the situation on the ground."
Many Palestinians and their advocates said the sanctions don't go far enough.
“While this is a step in the right direction, it is woefully inadequate," Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said on social media. “We are beyond words of condemnation. Israel has demonstrated, time and again, its disregard for international law."
"Words without action are not diplomacy. It is abdicating responsibilities," Zomlot continued. “What is needed now is clear: a ban on settlement products, comprehensive sanctions on those profiting from illegal settlements and the state sponsoring them, and guarantees that British companies, banks, and financial institutions are not contributing to Israel’s illegal occupation.“
"Justice cannot wait," the ambassador added. "The time for meaningful action is now.”
Amnesty International UK crisis response manager Kristyan Benedict called the new sanctions "a step, but not enough."
"If ministers are serious about sanctioning those 'who support and sponsor violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank', they must act on the reality that settlements and settler violence are state policy—directed and funded from the top," Benedict argued.
“Targeting settler financing networks while the ministers who run this campaign face no consequences is not meaningful accountability—it leaves the architects untouched," he stressed, calling on the UK government to also sanction Netanyahu, Gallant, current Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Settlement Minister Orit Strock.
“The legal obligation is clear, but the political will is still not strong enough," Benedict added. "Successive UK governments have failed to take meaningful action to stop Israel's crimes and those that enable them. That failure sends a dangerous message that Palestinian lives are not valued and that unlawful occupation and apartheid are acceptable. This must end now.”
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said in a statement that "whilst any move towards additional sanctions is correct, these are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people."
"In addition to these limited sanctions, the government has announced that it will ‘firmly advise’ British businesses against illegal activity, sending the disgraceful message that acting according to international law is optional," PSC added.
This week, around 140 Labour members of UK Parliament urged Cooper to take “urgent, concrete action to counter the escalation of violations against Palestinians” by “ending trade with illegal Israeli settlements.”
Adil Haque, executive editor at Just Security and distinguished professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, said on X: "Better something than nothing, but if the aim is the removal of *all* illegal settlements, then targeted sanctions against a few groups and individuals will not do much."
Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin replied to a social media post from Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand saying her country's government "continues to oppose the expansion of settlements," asking, "How?"
"How do you oppose them? Sanction ISRAEL," Mohyeddin asserted. "Those supporting the settlers are the Israeli state. Those who are arming them are the Israeli state. And it is Canadian Zionist charities that are funding them."
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country's government "firmly rejects the disgraceful measures adopted by foreign governments against Israeli citizens, entities, and a government minister," accusing the six nations of attempting to “impose a political stance regarding the right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—camouflaged as measures against violence.”
The ministry also blasted what it called the countries' "resounding failure" to "combat the antisemitism that is rampant in their own countries,” adding that “anti-Israeli policies of the kind adopted today only serve to fuel that antisemitism.”
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.
Efforts by the Israeli government, military, and settlers to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. With the world's attention focused on Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have ramped up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territory.
Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,098 Palestinians between October 7, 2023 and May 18, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. At least 240 of the slain victims were children.
Israeli settlers frequently attack Palestinian homes, businesses, and farms, and other critical infrastructure. The attackers burn homes, destroy crops, kill or steal livestock, and sometimes forcibly expel residents. Journalists who document the assaults and international activists trying to protect locals from the rampaging assailants have also been attacked.
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Israeli Forces Kill Parents and 2 Children in West Bank, Beat Surviving Children
"Targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement," the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Mar 15, 2026
The Israeli Defense Forces killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children in the West Bank on Sunday, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in weeks.
The soldiers opened fire on a car in the village of Tammun in which 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and their four sons Mohammad, Othman, Mustafa, and Khaled were traveling. Odeh, Waad, 5-year-old Mohammad, and 7-year-old Othman were shot in the head and died, leaving behind two injured children.
"We came under direct fire, we didn't know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except my brother Mustafa and me," one of the surviving children, 12-year-old Khaled, told Reuters from the hospital.
He said that after the shooting was over, the Israeli soldiers pulled him out of the car and began to beat him, telling him, "We killed dogs."
"These crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians."
The soldiers also beat his other surviving brother, according to Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military said that it had been operating in Tammun to make arrests on "terrorist" charges and that soldiers had fired on a vehicle when it accelerated toward them, according to Reuters. It said it was reviewing the incident.
Al Jazeera journalist Nida Ibrahim said that the family had been totally shocked by the shooting.
“The extended family says the father and the mother did not know that Israeli forces were there as they were in a Palestinian car,” she said.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the killing on social media as a "terrifying arbitrary execution crime that targeted an entire Palestinian family inside their vehicle."
The Israeli soldiers also prevented Red Crescent workers from reaching the family, the ministry said, leading to the families' "deliberate and cold-blooded execution."
The ministry continued: "The Ministry affirms that targeting an entire family in this savage manner reveals the true nature of the Israeli occupation and its policies based on killing and extermination, destruction and displacement, amid a systematic impunity, and it further affirms that these crimes, concurrent with the escalation of settler crimes and their organized terrorism in the occupied West Bank, are not isolated incidents, but part of a comprehensive and systematic aggression aimed at exterminating the Palestinian people and displacing them, in clear exploitation of the escalation occurring in the region."
In a statement issued on social media, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) also blamed the deaths on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which has been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.
"This escalation in these crimes comes as a direct result of the expansion of shooting instructions in the Israeli army, the rising violence of settlers amid the prevalence of an impunity policy, and the entrenchment of ethnic cleansing amid unprecedented international silence," PCHR said.
It continued: "While the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemns the unjustified murder crimes committed by occupation forces and settlers, it affirms that these crimes occur within a systematic policy pursued by the occupation authorities using lethal force against Palestinian civilians, in flagrant violation of the principles of necessity and distinction that form fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Moreover, they come as part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing citizens, intimidating them, and entrenching ethnic cleansing policies, and replicating acts of genocide, albeit in a less overt manner."
Also on Sunday, Israeli settlers killed a Palestinian man in Nablus Governorate, making him the sixth man killed by settlers since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. Movement restrictions imposed due the war have emboldened setters to attack, knowing that ambulances will be delayed in reaching their victims, human rights advocates and healthcare workers told Reuters.
In total, Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed 25 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, PCHR said.
In Gaza, where Israeli strikes at first declined following the beginning of the Iran war, the death toll is rising again. On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed nine police officers in Zawayda and a pregnant woman, her husband, and son in Nuseirat.
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'A State-Sponsored Lynching, Funded by the US': Israeli Settlers Kill Palestinian-American in West Bank
Local officials called the killing a “fully-fledged crime... carried out under the protection and supervision of the Israeli occupation forces.”
Feb 20, 2026
Palestinian authorities and witnesses to an Israeli settler attack in the West Bank that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian-American this week said the young man, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, had been trying to stop settlers from attacking a farmer in the village of Mukhmas when he was fatally shot.
Abu Siyam was an American citizen, his mother told the Associated Press, and was in his village Wednesday afternoon when a group of settlers arrived there and attempted to steal sheep from a local farmer.
After residents intervened, the Israel Defense Forces arrived and shot tear gas, sound grenades, and live ammunition, according to Mukhmas resident Raed Abu Ali. The IDF told the AP that it had only used "riot dispersal methods" to stop Palestinians in the town from throwing rocks.
But Abu Ali reported that the settlers who had initiated the assault "were encouraged" when the IDF got involved, and they "started shooting live bullets" as well as hitting injured people with sticks.
Several other Palestinians sustained gunshot wounds. The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed Abu Siyam's killing.
The governorate of Jerusalem called the killing a “fully-fledged crime... carried out under the protection and supervision of the Israeli occupation forces.”
Abu Siyam was the second Palestinian-American to be killed by Israeli settlers in less than a year and at least the 11th to be killed since 2022.
Israeli settlers and military forces killed 240 Palestinians in the West Bank last year as violence there surged and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government pushed to further illegally annex the occupied territory, with Israelis building 130 new settlements in the West Bank in 2024 and 2025.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, progressive lawmakers in the US have called on President Donald Trump to take action to stop Israel from its illegal annexation, but the president has reportedly approved of plans like one that proposes the creation of the E1 settlement, which "buries the idea of a Palestinian state," according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Abu Siyam was killed days after Israel approved a plan to designate large parts of the West Bank as "state property" of Israel, forcing Palestinians to prove that they own their land.
Breaking the Silence, a group formed by former Israeli soldiers to oppose Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, emphasized that while the IDF did not carry out the attack that killed Abu Siyam, the military has played an active role in settlers' assaults on Palestinian communities in the West Bank, including in Mukhmas.
"Since October, the village has faced escalating settler terror: olive trees uprooted, Palestinians and activists attacked and hospitalized, homes torched," said the group. "When residents tried to rebuild their burned homes after the pogrom that took place three weeks ago, the army blocked them, declaring the area a 'closed military zone.' Somehow, measures are taken only after the pogrom. Never to prevent it. This is not a mistake, it's strategy."
"The IDF is not 'failing its mission,'" Breaking the Silence added. "It is implementing a policy: Settlers initiate the violence, the army enforces the outcome, until communities are pushed out. If we don’t stop it, Muḥkmas’ story will be no different."
A US official told Reuters that “the US Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas," and a spokesperson for the US embassy in Israel told the AP that US officials "condemn this violence."
The anti-war group CodePink, however, emphasized that deadly settler attacks, including those that have killed US citizens, are "funded by the United States," the largest international financial backer of the IDF.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2023 and have forcibly displaced more than 10,000.
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