While the devastation of Gaza dominates the headlines, Israeli settlers have been ramping up violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and stealing ever more of their land. The illegal settlement project has long been recognised as undermining the viability of a Palestinian state and as an impediment to peace. Lib Dem MPs have rightly spoken out in favour not just of a lasting ceasefire but of a sustainable way out of this crisis for both peoples. But as we try to find a way to a better future, we need to take another look at what is happening in the West Bank right now.
On the night of Saturday 29 March this year, around 140 Israeli soldiers and settlers raided the Masafer Yatta Village of Jinba in the West Bank. Windows were smashed, homes ransacked, and a school and health clinic damaged. This followed an earlier attack in which settlers beat six residents with batons, hospitalising five – including a 15-year-old boy – before soldiers arrived and arrested 22 villagers accused of attacking a settler Shepherd.
Just days earlier, Palestinian film director Hamdan Ballal was attacked by armed settlers in his village, Susya, also in Masafer Yatta. Ballal was surrounded and beaten outside his home, sustaining injuries to his head and stomach. Israeli authorities subsequently arrested Ballal and two other Palestinians, detaining them in a military facility overnight. The attack came mere weeks after Ballal was presented with an Oscar for his film ‘No Other Land,’ a documentary depicting just such state-backed settler violence.
These attacks are not isolated incidents, nor the actions of ‘bad apples’. They are part of an entrenched strategy to dispossess, displace and oppress Palestiniancommunities and, in so doing, accelerate Israeli settlement expansion across the illegally occupied West Bank. Since 1967, over 700,000 Israelis have transferred into the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced through a combination of discriminatory policies and military and settler violence. Home demolitions, movement restrictions, land confiscation and punitive residency revocations all function within a system Amnesty carefully but justifiably characterises as apartheid. Violence, harassment, land theft and destruction of property by settlers – often carried out with support and assistance from Israeli authorities – adds to the pressure.
Such tactics have intensified sharply since October 2023. As international attention remains fixed on the devastation in Gaza, settler and military violence in the West Bank has surged. UN figures reveal that more than 1,800 settler attacks occurred between October 2023 and the end of 2024. A West Bank Palestinian child is killed every two days by a settler or Israeli soldier, according to Defence for Children International – Palestine. There have been 694 attacks on medical facilities recorded between October 2023 and December 2024.
In just the first few months of 2025, over 10,000 new settlement units have been approved – already surpassing the total for all of 2024 – while a record 49 new Israeli outposts have been established. In the northern West Bank refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams and al-Fara’a, Israeli forces have launched their largest West Bank military operation in two decades, displacing more than 40,000 Palestinians and killing 44, including an eight-month pregnant woman. The architects of this project, including far-right ministers like Bezalel Smotrich, are increasingly open about their intentions. “We raise the flag, build and settle,” Smotrich said in March.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion concluding that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is unlawful, and its discriminatory policies against Palestinians violate the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. The ruling makes clear that all states, including the UK, are obliged not to recognise or assist the unlawful occupation in any form, including through trade, arms sales, or economic ties that entrench Israel’s illegal presence. Yet the UK continues to permit imports from illegal settlements, allows British firms to conduct business with them, and exports arms to Israel – placing it in clear violation of its international obligations.
The Liberal Democrats have taken the clearest and most consistent position of any major British political party on the situation in Palestine. We were the first to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and we have repeatedly spoken out in defence of international law, including calling on the government to respect in full the ICJ’s advisory opinion. We have also called for a ban on trade with illegal settlements, sanctions on far-right ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, the suspension of arms exports to Israel, and immediate recognition of Palestine as a sovereign, independent state.
But a greater sense of urgency is necessary. Restating a principled position is insufficient as the situation rapidly deteriorates. As Easter approaches, Salem Kasabreh, a West Bank Anglican Priest says Palestinians “are thinking about their existential position in the West Bank”. We are a party that prides itself on its commitment to human rights and international law. As Israel accelerates its discrimination, forced displacement and killing of Palestinians, we must step up. It must be our goal – inside and outside parliament – to ensure our strong policies translate into significant and sustained pressure on the UK government to break with its current policy of complicity and create the conditions necessary for lasting peace.
* Jonathan Brown is a District Councillor for Chichester North and Vice Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.