What does it say about global diplomacy that, in the same month when the West patted itself on the back for a ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank endured the highest number of settler attacks ever recorded?In keeping with the past two years, the international community is condemning violence in principle, while granting Israel total impunity in practice. A response that is timid, hollow and all too predictable.In October 2025, the United Nations documented more than 260 settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage. Vehicles were torched, Palestinian agricultural workers assaulted, and olive trees burned, at the height of the harvest season. The violence is relentless, and the world’s timid response rings hollow.But this is hardly unprecedented. Since October 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 1,040 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 229 children, according to the UN. Violence is unfolding alongside mass displacement. In early 2025, an estimated 40,000 people were forcibly displaced by the Israeli army’s “Iron Wall” Operation in the northern West Bank, the largest single displacement in the West Bank since 1967.It was then that I managed to enter the occupied West Bank, along with fellow British MP Andrew G …
