1. The Israeli government and state support settler violence against Palestinians. It is an integral part of Israel’s decades-long dispossession of Palestinians and theft of Palestinian land.
- Settler violence has been a central component of Israel’s settlement enterprise since it began in earnest in the 1970s. While Israeli officials sometimes condemn settler attacks when they make international headlines, Israel’s settlers, government, and occupying army work together to push Palestinians out of their homes and off their land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As noted by Israeli rights group, B’Tselem:
- “Settler violence against Palestinians is part of the strategy employed by Israel’s apartheid regime, which seeks to take over more and more West Bank land. The state fully supports and assists these acts of violence, and its agents sometimes participate in them directly.”
- In 2022, a group of independent UN human rights experts released a statement condemning settler violence and the complicity of Israel’s government and army, noting:
- “Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence.”
2. Israeli settlers have been waging a campaign of terror against Palestinians for decades, but the number of attacks has reached unprecedented levels in recent months and years.
- In the 1980s, settlers terrorized Palestinians with a series of bombing and shooting attacks that killed and maimed numerous people, including targeting mayors of Palestinian towns and a plot to blow up the Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. In the single deadliest instance of settler violence, in 1994 a Brooklyn-born settler massacred 29 Palestinians while they prayed in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in the West Bank.
- Since 2017, the number of settler attacks against Palestinians has increased each year. In August 2023, prior to the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the UN warned of a dramatic rise in settler violence, with nearly 600 attacks recorded in the first six months of the year, an increase of nearly 40% over the monthly average in 2022.
- Following the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, the number of settler attacks skyrocketed. In October 2025 alone, the UN recorded at least 264 settler attacks against Palestinians, the highest monthly total since the UN began tracking settler violence in 2006. Between November 2024 and March 2026, settlers killed at least 21 Palestinians in the West Bank, including seven in March 2026 alone.
3. Extremist settlers hold powerful positions in Israel’s government and openly condone and incite violence against Palestinians.
- Senior Israeli government officials, including powerful National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of Israel’s domestic police and paramilitary Border Police in the West Bank, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is responsible for overseeing Israel’s settlement enterprise, are far-right settlers who encourage settler attacks on Palestinians.
- Ben-Gvir, who lives in one of the most extreme settlements in the West Bank, has a long history of inciting racism and violence against Palestinians, including multiple convictions for supporting a terrorist organization. In 2023, he praised settlers who murdered a 19-year-old Palestinian, calling them “heroes.” The same year he backed young settlers who rampaged through the West Bank attacking Palestinians and torching their homes and cars, calling them “sweet kids.” Until recently, for many years Ben-Gvir had a framed photo of the settler who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994 hanging in a place of honor in his home.
4. U.S.- based non-profits funnel millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations to extremist settler groups each year.
- Groups like the New York-based Central Fund of Israel send millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations annually to many of the most violent elements in the settler movement. Amongst others, they fund a group that provides legal and financial support to Jewish extremists who have been accused and convicted of murder and other violent attacks against Palestinians and liberal Israelis, and a religious school in a West Bank settlement where some of the most radical settlers live and whose leaders published a book condoning the murder of Palestinians, including children. The book argued that the injunction “Thou Shalt Not Murder” applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew.”
5. All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and violate longstanding U.S. policy prior to the Trump administration.
- Israel’s settlement enterprise is illegal under international law and has been repeatedly condemned as such by the UN Security Council and the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, as well as human rights organizations and other experts. According to Amnesty International:
- “Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.”
- Israel’s settlement enterprise also violates longstanding official U.S. policy prior to the Trump administration, and has severely undermined efforts by the U.S. and international community to make peace in the region based on the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories as part of a “two-state solution.”
Go deeper
- Explainer: Israel’s Settlement Enterprise</li>
- Quick Facts: Israel’s Settlement Enterprise
- Explainer: The Temple Mount Movement
- Fact Sheet: Meir Kahane & The Extremist Kahanist Movement
- Explainer: The Central Fund of Israel
- Fact Sheet: A Case Study in Complicity: The Israeli Government & Extremist Attacks Against Palestinians (2014)