Six countries — the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Norway — imposed coordinated sanctions in early June targeting individuals and networks involved in financing, enabling, and carrying out settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The action, the broadest multilateral sanctions effort targeting settler activity in the territory's history, reflects growing international alarm at what foreign ministries described as record levels of illegal settlement expansion and near-daily violent incidents against Palestinian communities.
According to UN documentation compiled through May 2026, at least 13 Palestinians have been killed and approximately 500 injured by Israeli settlers in the first five months of the year. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded 1,732 incidents involving settler violence resulting in casualties or property damage — a significant increase on the 1,400 incidents recorded in the previous comparable reporting period.
New Settlements and International Law
The sanctions came weeks after the Israeli government authorized the construction of 34 new settlements in the West Bank on April 9 — a figure that is nearly six times the total number of settlements approved in the thirty years following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. That decision, combined with the pattern of violence, prompted a joint statement from the six sanctioning governments warning that the settlement trajectory was incompatible with a negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The pace and scale of what is happening in the West Bank cannot be described as incremental. It represents a deliberate strategy of facts on the ground, and we will not be passive witnesses to it.
The Israeli government responded to the sanctions with sharp criticism, describing the action as one-sided and asserting that the violence is perpetrated by a minority of individuals who do not represent Israeli policy. Government ministers argued that Palestinian Authority incitement and ongoing security threats justify the Israeli presence in the West Bank and that settlement construction is a matter of Israeli sovereign policy.
Specific Incidents
Among the incidents that drew particular international attention was a March episode in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Humsa, where settlers broke into a family home and assaulted residents. During the Eid holiday period, accounts from multiple organizations described groups of settlers moving through Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank, attacking vehicles, setting cars on fire, and throwing Molotov cocktails at homes. Several villages reported that they received no meaningful security response from the Israeli military during the incidents.
UN human rights experts called the settler activity "settler terror" in a statement released in late May, language that reflects an escalation in tone from international bodies that had previously used softer characterizations of settler violence. The statement called on Israel to prosecute perpetrators and on the international community to impose consequences for continued impunity.
Israeli Government Response
Israel announced in late March that it would crack down on settler violence in the West Bank, a commitment made to the United States, which has consistently pressed Israel on the issue. Critics of the government, including some within the security establishment, have said the follow-through on enforcement has been limited and that the legal framework for prosecuting settler violence remains weaker than equivalent protections for Israeli citizens inside Israel proper.