Ramallah, January 5, 2026 (WAFA) – Minister Mu’ayyad Sha’ban, head of the Commission against the Wall and Settlements, stated that Israeli occupation forces and settlers carried out 23,827 attacks against Palestinian citizens and their property across the West Bank governorates last year, marking a record high in the number of attacks recorded in a single year. These attacks were distributed as follows: 1,382 against land and crops, 16,664 against individuals, and 5,398 against other properties.
Shaaban explained during a press conference held at the Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah on Monday, regarding the most prominent violations by the occupation and its settlers during the year 2025, that the occupation army carried out 18,384 attacks, while the settlers carried out 4,723, and the two sides together carried out 720.
Shaaban stated that 2025 was a year laden with blood, maps, and resolutions. The occupying power not only expanded settlements but also sought to broaden the very meaning of control. Domination was no longer confined to land as a physical space, but extended to redefining Palestinian geography, symbolism, and existence in its entirety. In a reality where the occupation authorities effectively control approximately 41% of the West Bank, maintain a tight grip on nearly 70% of Area C, and seize over 90% of the Jordan Valley through a comprehensive system of military orders and expropriation measures, these figures are no longer a neutral description of reality, but rather tangible evidence of a fully-fledged political project.
He added that this report documents a year of violations that were not committed in secret, but rather carried out openly as part of the political process, under the protection of a government that views the land as spoils of war, the law as a tool, and force as a substitute for legitimacy. He explained that the report does not merely present a numerical account of the violations, but places these events within their political and moral context, as the product of a comprehensive colonial project targeting the land, the people, and their collective memory. When Palestinian geography is reduced to isolated and besieged enclaves, and Palestinians are pushed out of their land, the occupation becomes a permanent condition, not a temporary measure.
14 martyrs as a result of settler attacks and the destruction of 35,000 trees
Shaaban added that settler attacks have resulted in the martyrdom of 14 citizens since the beginning of the year, and they caused 434 fires in citizens’ properties and fields, including 307 fires in citizens’ properties and 127 in fields and agricultural lands, and they were concentrated in the governorates of: Ramallah with 181, Nablus with 79, then Hebron with 42, and Tulkarm with 26. He added that the army and settlers carried out 892 attacks that caused the uprooting, damage, destruction and poisoning of a total of 35,273 trees, including 26,988 olive trees, with the governorates of Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron and Salfit having the largest share of them.
He added that settler terrorism in these outposts has led to the displacement of 13 Palestinian Bedouin communities since the beginning of last year, consisting of 197 families comprising 1,090 individuals, from their places of residence to other places, including the displacement of the communities of Deir Alla, Ain Ayub, Al-Malihat, Mughayir Al-Deir, West Kobar, Al-Mahariq, Jibya and others, and the settlers’ control over the sites.
1400 structures demolished and notices issued for the demolition of another 991 structures
He explained that during 2025, the occupation authorities carried out a total of 538 demolition operations, which resulted in the demolition of 1,400 structures, an unprecedented increase within the framework of the methodology of targeting Palestinian construction and natural growth. This included 304 inhabited homes and 74 uninhabited homes, in addition to 270 sources of livelihood and 490 agricultural facilities, concentrated in the governorates of Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Tubas and Nablus. In parallel, Shaaban pointed out that the number of notices delivered to citizens increased to 991 notices, concentrated in the governorates of: Hebron with 276, Ramallah with 169 notices, and Bethlehem and Jerusalem with 124 notices each, which indicates the targeting of more Palestinian construction under the pretext of lacking permits.
Seizure of 5,572 dunams and study of 265 structural plans for settlements
Regarding colonial settlement expansion, Shaaban stated that last year the occupation authorities seized 5,572 dunams of land through 94 confiscation orders for military purposes. Of these, 24 were for the establishment of buffer zones around settlements, 52 for the construction of security roads for the benefit of settlers, 5 for the erection of barbed wire fences and walls, and 9 for the establishment and expansion of military sites and other facilities. In addition, there were 3 expropriation orders and 4 orders declaring land as state land . Furthermore, the authorities allocated a total of 16,733 dunams of previously seized land for settler grazing, further demonstrating their support for armed settler terrorism aimed at seizing land under the guise of grazing and agriculture.
Regarding the expansion of settlements, Shaaban pointed out that the “planning committees” of the occupation authorities have studied, since the beginning of 2025, a total of 265 structural plans for the purpose of building a total of 34,979 settlement units on an area of 33,448 dunams. The process of approving 20,850 of these units has taken place, while 14,129 new settlement units have been deposited, between the settlements of the West Bank and settlements and neighborhoods within the boundaries of the occupation municipality in Jerusalem.
He added that these plans were concentrated in the governorates of: Jerusalem with 107 structural plans (41 plans outside the boundaries of the occupation municipality and 66 in settlements within the municipality’s boundaries), followed by Salfit with 41, Bethlehem with 34, Ramallah with 31, and Nablus and Qalqilya with 17 each. He explained that the most dangerous of these approved plans is the E1 plan , which was approved in August of this year after a postponement and withdrawal that lasted for 30 years. He added that with the approval of this plan, the occupying state has implemented the first step of the Greater Jerusalem plan, which aims to annex 3 large settlement blocs to the Jerusalem municipality’s area of influence, namely (the Ma’ale Adumim bloc, which has practically been merged), the Givat Ze’ev bloc, and the Gush Etzion bloc. This further separates Jerusalem from its Palestinian context and makes Jerusalem a demographic and geographical extension of the Jewish presence within the municipality’s boundaries and the colonial presence outside the municipality’s boundaries .
He pointed out that the occupying power decided to separate 13 settlements and designate them as neighborhoods, then added a decision to establish 22 new settlements, and followed it up at the end of the year with its latest decision to establish 19 new settlement outposts, adding to a list of 68 agricultural outposts that the occupation government decided to provide with all the necessary infrastructure to secure their presence on Palestinian land . In addition, tenders were issued for the construction of 10,098 new settlement units, including more than 7,000 for the Ma’ale Adumim settlement east of Jerusalem, 900 for the Efrat settlement on Bethlehem land, and another 700 in Ariel on land in the Salfit Governorate, among others.
The Knesset is an advanced tool for employing laws to deepen colonialism.
Shaaban explained that, on the legislative front, 2025 marked a significant step forward in the use of the legal system as a central tool for deepening the colonial project. The Knesset, the occupying power, advanced a wide range of draft laws and legislative amendments aimed at legitimizing existing colonial realities, expanding the powers of settlers and their local councils, and enshrining legal discrimination in land management, planning, and construction. These drafts included laws intended to legalize settlement outposts established without prior government decisions, strengthen Israeli control over West Bank lands by transferring additional civil powers to occupation institutions, and undermine the legal status of Palestinian land and its owners, such as the law enabling settlers to own real estate and land and changing the names of Palestinian land to obsolete biblical names. These laws also sought to provide legal cover for acts of land confiscation and demolition, and to transform exceptional measures into permanent rules. This reflects the Knesset’s shift from a traditional legislative role to a direct partner in imposing creeping annexation, and redefining the occupation as a system of coercive sovereignty based on legislation, not just military force.
Shaaban stressed that the current stage requires an urgent national shift from describing the risks to building a comprehensive response to protect the Palestinian land, based on a clear distribution of roles and integration of efforts between official institutions, political and societal forces, in order to restore the land to its rightful place as the essence and center of the conflict.
He stressed the need for immediate and systematic protection of targeted Palestinian communities through practical and sustainable intervention plans that enhance human resilience on their land as rights holders, not recipients of aid, in parallel with unifying Palestinian legal efforts and activating international accountability tools without delay or selectivity, and investing in the accumulation of documentation in effective judicial paths before international courts and relevant UN mechanisms.
He also called for developing the tools of popular resistance to ensure its continuity and effectiveness, transforming it from seasonal and symbolic actions into organized and meaningful ones. At the same time, he emphasized the importance of building a unified national political and media discourse that redefines what is happening as a fully-fledged settler-colonial project. He concluded that all of this falls within a comprehensive national vision for protecting Palestinian territory, one that prioritizes the supreme national interest and is based on a conscious popular will capable of transforming steadfastness into action and the right into an irreversible path of reclaiming it .
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