"The Wall and Settlement": 11,280 Attacks Carried Out by the Occupation and Its Settlers in the First Half of 2025

SadaNews - The Head of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Muayad Shaaban, stated that the total number of attacks carried out by the occupying state in the first half of 2025 reached 11,280 attacks carried out by various state apparatuses, including the militias of its settlers against citizens and their properties.

Shaaban added during a press conference for the commission to announce its semi-annual report "The Occupying State's Attacks on Palestinian Lands and Colonial Expansion Measures" for the first half of 2025, that this significant escalation in the form, number, and nature of attacks coincides with the aggression waged by the occupying state against our people in the Gaza Strip and all areas of Palestinian presence, noting that the attacks varied between imposing facts on the ground (seizing land, colonial expansion, and forced displacement), extrajudicial executions, land destruction, uprooting trees, seizing properties, and road closures and checkpoints that sever the connections of Palestinian geography.

He pointed out that the attacks were concentrated in the provinces of: Ramallah with 1,975 attacks, followed by Hebron with 1,918, and then Nablus with 1,784.

Shaaban stated that the occupying state has raced against time over the past six months, in every sense of the word, to pounce on Palestinian geography, not only by establishing colonial outposts or enlarging settlements, nor by issuing military orders, or through systematic attacks on citizens in villages, towns, and Bedouin communities, besieging and choking them, but also through an unprecedented number of legislations and government decisions that target the essence of Palestinian geography and its status, placing us face to face—government, people, institutions, and councils—with the most dangerous phase the Palestinian cause is going through in terms of attempts to dispossess, annex, and impose sovereignty.

He added that the attacks carried out by settlers during the period covered by the report amounted to a total of 2,153 attacks, which resulted in the martyrdom of 4 citizens at the hands of settlers, with the settlers' attacks ranging from assaults on Palestinian villages and attacking the safe within them, setting homes ablaze, shooting at citizens, establishing colonial outposts, seizing citizens' lands, assaulting streets and vehicles, and launching organized and dangerous attacks that characterized these recent assaults as seen in the villages of Kafr Malik, al-Mughayer, Beita, Singel, and others.

These attacks concentrated in the provinces of: Ramallah with 491 attacks, Hebron with 409, and Nablus with 396.

Shaaban indicated that from the beginning of 2025 until the end of June, the occupation authorities studied (depositing and approving) a total of 165 structural plans for the expansion of settlements or establishing new settlements, including: 124 plans for West Bank settlements and 41 plans for Jerusalem settlements, studying a total of more than 8,685 housing units in West Bank settlements and 8,865 for Jerusalem settlements.

He continued: In the first half of 2025, settlers established 23 colonial outposts on citizens' lands, most of which are pastoral outposts, in the provinces of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Qalqilya, Tubas, and Jerusalem, continuing the policy of imposing facts on the ground adopted by settlers on the land under the full sponsorship of the occupation army.

He added that during the period covered by the report, the occupation authorities seized more than 800 dunams of citizens' lands under various pretensions, by issuing 36 orders for confiscation for military purposes, and one order for expropriation under the pretext of road construction and expansion.

Shaaban noted that in the first half of 2025, the Israeli occupation authorities issued 556 demolition notices for Palestinian facilities under the pretext of lack of licensing, including 322 inhabited houses, 18 others uninhabited, 151 facilities classified as agricultural, 97 classified as livelihood sources and others.

He continued: Most of these notices were concentrated in the provinces of: Hebron with 145 notices, Ramallah with 131, Qalqilya with 49, and Jericho with 46, and the occupation authorities executed a total of 380 demolition operations that led to the destruction of 588 facilities, affecting 843 people as a result of the demolitions, including 411 children and 378 women.

Shaaban pointed out that the occupying state and settlers' militias have caused the cutting and damage of a total of 12,067 trees, including 6,144 olive trees, of which 5,359 trees were in Bethlehem governorate, 2,282 trees in Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate, and 1,774 trees in Nablus governorate, in another record number recorded against the Palestinian tree, in a clear and systematic targeting as part of the plan to empty and devalue Palestinian land.

He renewed his call to all Palestinians, factions, popular unions, syndicates, and masses, to come together under a national strategy to defend the land and national resources, one that looks only to Palestine, cares only about Palestine, and views what the occupation is doing with a sense of national responsibility free from self-interest and vile vindictiveness.

He noted that the desired national strategy must first gather national and popular potentials for it, and secondly possess creativity and think outside the box of habit and the previously used tools, in terms of re-producing new tools that align with the stage and adapt to its hardships.

Shaaban emphasized that the current stage once again brings the old yet new demand to the forefront, which is the necessity of having real and immediate international protection that safeguards the Palestinian people and their national resources against the occupation’s bullying.