As US and Israeli forces wage war against Iran, settlers in the occupied West Bank are exploiting the chaos — burning homes, killing Palestinians, and displacing communities with near-total impunity.
The fires in Nablus and Jenin lit up the night sky on March 22–23, for the second consecutive night. Masked settlers torched homes, cars, and businesses across multiple Palestinian villages while Israeli security forces — stretched thin and distracted by the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran — were largely absent or passive. Ten Palestinians were injured. No settlers were arrested.
This is not a new story. It is the latest chapter in a years-long escalation that has intensified with every regional shock — and the Iran war has provided the most dramatic cover yet.
A Crisis Born Long Before February 2026
The current surge in settler violence cannot be divorced from its origins in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which triggered a cascading regional crisis. In the months that followed, settler groups launched retaliatory rampages across the West Bank. The pattern was already visible before October 7 — the 2023 Huwara pogrom, in which settlers burned homes and killed two Palestinians while the army stood by, was a stark preview of what was to come.
By late 2024, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had documented over 1,000 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank, with more than 1,300 Palestinians forcibly displaced. Al Jazeera mapped 1,423 recorded attacks since October 7, with the heaviest concentrations in the Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron governorates.
The direct US-Israeli military strikes on Iran — beginning in earnest in February–March 2026 — appear to have accelerated the trend dramatically. As global media attention fixed itself on missile exchanges and nuclear sites, settler militias moved with increasing boldness. Since March 1, 2026 alone, the UN has confirmed six Palestinians killed by settlers in over 100 documented incidents. Human Rights Watch warned in a March 2026 report that settler violence is "intensifying in the shadow of war."
State Complicity, Not Just Impunity
What makes this violence structurally distinct from ordinary criminal conduct is the degree of state support — tacit and explicit — documented by rights organizations. Far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have armed settlers, advocated for the destruction of Palestinian villages, and promoted settlement expansion. In November 2024, the defense minister announced that Jewish settlers would no longer be subject to administrative detention — a measure still applied to thousands of Palestinians held without charge.
Military complicity has become increasingly direct. The Desert Frontier Battalion, which recruited extremist "hilltop youth" settlers — some with criminal records — was suspended in October 2024 after soldiers from the unit were identified as participants in the brutal beating and attempted sexual assault of Palestinians and activists.
The legal system offers Palestinians almost no recourse. Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din found that 97% of over 1,700 investigations into settler violence over two decades never led to a conviction. Out of roughly 1,500 killings between 2017 and September 2025, only 112 investigations were opened — yielding a single conviction.
Communities Under Siege
The human cost is vast and intimate. In July 2024, 20-year-old American-Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet was beaten to death by settlers. His aunt, Reem Musallet, told reporters: "We lost Sayf. We can't get him back, but we need justice." No settler was convicted.
Olive harvests — the backbone of Palestinian rural livelihoods — have been systematically disrupted. In Taybeh, olive groves were burned and farmers were too afraid to harvest. A fifth-century church in the same town was desecrated when settlers drove sheep into its yard and attempted to set it on fire.
Entire communities in the northern Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills face extinction. The so-called "Crimson Thread" project — a planned Israeli infrastructure corridor through the Jordan Valley — is widely seen as a deliberate effort to permanently reshape Palestinian demography under the cover of security needs.
The World Watches, Cautiously
International condemnation has been consistent but largely ineffective. The EU has sanctioned individual settlers. The Biden administration designated 24 individuals and entities under a February 2024 executive order. The UN Security Council has repeatedly addressed settler violence.[
Critics, however, argue these measures are cosmetic. Arabic-language outlets describe the situation with blunt directness: settler terrorism, systematic, organized, and shielded by the state.
With the Iran war dominating headlines and diplomatic bandwidth, the West Bank burns quietly. For Palestinians living under the shadow of settler militias and a government that funds them, the international community's cautious language offers cold comfort.
Illustration: Perplexity