---
title: "Sheep Farms Hold Up to a Fifth of the West Bank as Settler Attacks Go Unpunished"
description: "Israeli ministries help pay for roughly 200 settler grazing outposts, and about 94 percent of tracked police cases over settler attacks close without charges."
author: "rews special report"
published: 2026-10-11T23:00:16Z
modified: 2026-10-12T11:25:19Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/settlers-use-sheep-to-claim-west-bank-land-as-attacks-hit-a--366404
language: en
type: special report
tags: ["israel", "palestine", "violence", "sheep", "settlements", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Sheep Farms Hold Up to a Fifth of the West Bank as Settler Attacks Go Unpunished

*Israeli ministries help pay for roughly 200 settler grazing outposts, and about 94 percent of tracked police cases over settler attacks close without charges.*

Special report · By rews special report · October 11, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/settlers-use-sheep-to-claim-west-bank-land-as-attacks-hit-a--366404

## In brief

- About 200 settler sheep farms control an estimated 18% to 20% of the West Bank, according to CBS and Israeli monitors
- Israeli ministries have budgeted tens of millions of shekels since December 2023 for outpost vehicles, drones and roads
- UN monitors logged 1,828 settler attacks in 2025, a record, and the pace rose to 6.7 a day in 2026
- About 94% of police cases Yesh Din has tracked since 2005 closed without charges, and about 3% ended in conviction
- Trump lifted U.S. settler sanctions in 2025, and Britain and five allies sanctioned farm funders in June 2026

Some 200 Israeli sheep farms that have appeared in the West Bank in recent years now control an estimated 20 percent of the occupied territory, [CBS’s *60 Minutes* reported on Sunday](https://cbsnews.com/news/west-bank-palestinians-israeli-settlers-sheep-violence-60-minutes/).

Israeli monitors arrive at a similar figure. Peace Now and Kerem Navot, two Israeli groups that track settlement, found that farm outposts effectively control more than 1.1 million dunams, in [a report published in July](https://peacenow.org.il/en/annus-mirabilis). About 750,000 of those dunams were taken after the current government took office at the end of 2022. A dunam is 1,000 square meters. The European Union, using the groups’ data, puts the area at [more than 1,070,000 dunams, about 18 percent of the West Bank](https://www.eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2026/documents/2025%20Report%20on%20Israeli%20settlements%20in%20the%20occupied%20West%20Bank.pdf). In April 2025 the same groups had counted 786,000.

No sale, deed or court ruling was involved. Israeli monitors and a UN commission of inquiry describe the process: a flock and the young men who drive it push Palestinian herders off pasture and fields, and the state and the army back the result. Israeli ministries and a state-backed settlement agency have paid for the farms’ grazing, vehicles, drones and roads. The violence that clears the land is rarely punished. The UN logged 1,828 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in 2025, the most since it began counting in 2006. Of the police cases an Israeli rights group has followed since 2005, about 94 percent closed without charges.

Mordehai Minster, a settler who co-founded one of the farms, described the method to the correspondent Lesley Stahl.

> When you have sheep, everyone understands. Arabs tend to fight over grazing lands among themselves. It’s a language that we understand, and they understand. And it’s a way to delineate the border. This is where I graze my sheep. You don’t take your sheep here. You don’t plant here. You don’t build here.
>
> — Mordehai Minster, co-founder of a West Bank sheep farm, on 60 Minutes, [cbsnews.com](https://cbsnews.com/news/visiting-west-bank-where-israeli-settler-violence-against-palestinians-surging-60-minutes-transcript/)

Violence sometimes comes with it, Mr. Minster said, but it “doesn’t change the merit of the right that we have to this land.” Down the hill from his farm, in the village of Jannatah, the Faraj family says it has held the deed to its land for generations. Settlers pitched a tent in the family’s backyard on March 26, and since then one of its houses has been out of reach.

## How a flock draws a line

Peace Now and Kerem Navot set out the mechanics in [*The Bad Samaritan*](https://peacenow.org.il/en/the-bad-samaritan-land-grabbing-by-settlers-through-grazing), an April 2025 report. Settlers put up a shepherding outpost near a Palestinian herding community and graze toward its pastures and fields. They harass and attack the residents until they leave, and new outposts then go up on the emptied land. At the time the groups counted more than 100 such outposts and more than 60 displaced shepherding communities.

Most of that land is not what Israel itself calls state land. Of the 786,000 dunams in the report, about 281,500 were private Palestinian property and 324,000 lay inside military firing zones (the categories overlap). Even by Israeli definitions, the groups found, state land made up only about 40 percent.

![Seven sheep walk in a line across torn paper fields toward a curled flap, against a rust-orange background.](https://rews.cc/img/43a08bb07d23aff4a51f5fd3cc13a6f047a5d490.webp)

Paperwork helps. The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division is a government-funded body that manages [hundreds of thousands of dunams](https://peacenow.org.il/en/new-allocation-procedure) of West Bank land transferred to it by the state. According to figures from the State Attorney’s Office cited in the report, it allocated about 80,000 dunams for grazing, without a tender or payment. The monitors believe the contracts they obtained are about half the total. Those contracts covered some 9,000 dunams of private Palestinian land and more than 5,000 dunams inside firing zones. Some, the report says, allowed the grazer to call on the army to remove Palestinians.

The Agriculture Ministry pays as well. Under a program called Preserving Open Areas through Animal Grazing, it approved 3,170,176 shekels for West Bank herd owners from 2017 to 2023 and paid out 1,660,834, [Peace Now found in 2024](https://peacenow.org.il/en/the-ministry-of-agriculture-funds-illegal-farm-outposts). The ministry’s criteria list the “prevention of unauthorized takeover of these areas” among its goals. In the West Bank the money went only to Israeli herders. Three of the approved recipients were later sanctioned by the United States.

The method has spread from pasture to fields and to the West Bank’s [springs](https://rews.cc/a/the-garden-of-eden-diverted-settlers-take-the-west-bank-s-sp-82e71a). One Peace Now post shows settlers grazing sheep inside a Palestinian cucumber plot in Sinjil, near the Shilo settlement.

> The banality of evil: Settlers graze their sheep inside a Palestinian faqous (a type of cucumber) plot. Sinjil, not far from the Shilo settlement.
>
> — **Peace Now** @peacenowisrael on X · [June 20, 2026](https://x.com/peacenowisrael/status/2068393830009696492)

## Who pays

The open funding began in December 2023, while Israel was fighting in Gaza. The Settlements and National Missions Ministry, led by Orit Strock, quietly budgeted 75 million shekels, about $20.5 million, for security equipment for “young settlements,” its term for unauthorized farms and outposts, [according to an Associated Press report](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israeli-government-quietly-sends-more-than-20-million-to-unauthorized-west-bank-settler-outposts). Hagit Ofran of Peace Now said it was the first time the government had sent money to the outposts so openly. Ms. Strock’s office said the spending was coordinated with the Defense Ministry and “carried out in accordance with all laws.”

In April 2025, Ms. Strock and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich [handed 19 state-funded all-terrain vehicles](https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-gifts-state-financed-atvs-to-illegal-settlement-outposts/) to farm outposts in the South Hebron Hills. The ceremony was held at Meitarim Farm, run by Yinon Levi, whom the Biden administration had sanctioned for violence against Palestinians. In July 2025 the government [gave out 29 more](https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-gifts-more-atvs-to-illegal-west-bank-outposts-to-deepen-control-of-territory/), along with drones, night-vision goggles and generators, saying the aim was to “deepen” Israeli control of the territory.

In March, with attacks rising, the government approved another 50 million shekels, about $16 million, for equipment and access roads at illegal outposts, [The Times of Israel reported](https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-allocates-nis-50-million-for-illegal-often-violent-settlement-outposts/). The money goes from Ms. Strock’s ministry through the Settlement Division to settlement councils. The Defense Ministry and the army’s Central Command decide which outposts qualify. The attorney general’s office approved it because the equipment is portable and needs no building permit. Meitarim’s operator, Mr. Levi, is a suspect in the killing of the Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, according to the same report.

The 2025 report also lists 4.7 million shekels from the Jewish National Fund, described as support for volunteer programs for at-risk youth, millions in loans and construction from the settlement organization Amana, and tax-deductible private donations. The groups summed up the arrangement in a single sentence.

> A complex financial system funnels tens of millions of shekels annually to these illegal outposts.
>
> — Peace Now and Kerem Navot, in The Bad Samaritan, April 2025, [peacenow.org.il](https://peacenow.org.il/en/the-bad-samaritan-land-grabbing-by-settlers-through-grazing)

Legal status has followed. Defense Minister Israel Katz told a Likud meeting in late July that the coalition had approved 104 settlements and some 160 settlement farms since 2022, [Al Jazeera reported, citing Israeli media](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/4/israel-election-pressure-fuels-settlement-push-as-west-bank-violence-surges). In March the security cabinet secretly approved more than 30 new outposts and farms, [CNN reported](https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/09/middleeast/israeli-government-approves-west-bank-settler-outpost-intl), citing three Israeli sources. In June, Haaretz reported that the Defense Ministry and the army were [drafting regulations to legalize](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-06-12/ty-article/.premium/israel-pushes-regulations-to-legalize-west-bank-farm-outposts/0000019e-bb0f-db9b-a3fe-ff3fa4740000) about 100 farms that were set up with state encouragement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that process fast-tracked in March.

## The long record

The legal groundwork goes back to 1979. That October, in the Elon Moreh case, Israel’s Supreme Court barred the military from seizing private Palestinian land for a permanent settlement. Within about a month the government found another route. It began declaring land “state land” under the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which still governs West Bank property, [B’Tselem documented](https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201203_under_the_guise_of_legality). Between 1979 and 2002 Israel declared more than 900,000 dunams that way.

The code rewards use. A farmer who cultivates land for 10 years gains rights to it, and land left uncultivated for three years can revert to the state. B’Tselem found that Israel read those rules more strictly than the Ottoman, British or Jordanian authorities had. Palestinians claiming rocky hill land had to show they cultivated at least half the parcel, and Israel declared state land on grazing ground that the code sets aside for village use. In effect, the farms work that logic from the other end: a herder who is kept off a field cannot show the use the code rewards.

![A wooden-handled hoe rests in a rough stone block above torn-paper farmland transitioning from green crops to dry soil, beside a wooden stamp on blank parchment.](https://rews.cc/img/d1652a2b815e378b1505e133b2bc4bfbf93accfb.webp)

The farms themselves date from Nov. 16, 1998. That day Ariel Sharon, then foreign minister, told settlers they [should “grab more hills”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilltop_Youth) before land was handed over under a peace deal. Havat Maon, an early farm outpost in the South Hebron Hills, went up in 1997 inside a firing zone. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had it evacuated in November 1999, [The Washington Post reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/pmextra/nov99/10/settlers.htm), and settlers soon rebuilt it nearby.

For years the farms stayed few. Dror Etkes, who founded Kerem Navot, told [CNN in 2025](https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/20/middleeast/israel-west-bank-herding-outposts-intl-invs) that the current pattern began around 2009. The big jump came in Donald Trump’s first term, he said, when new herding outposts went from between one and four a year to nearly 10 starting in 2018. Twenty-nine went up in 2023 and 38 in 2024. Peace Now counted [a record 86 new outposts in 2025](https://peacenow.org.il/en/summary-of-2025-in-settlements), about one or two a week, and 58 to 60 of them were farms by its two counts.

The farms need roads. Peace Now and Kerem Navot counted at least 223 kilometers of new roads opened across the West Bank from 2023 through 2025. The Wall Street Journal mapped the same construction in a video investigation.

[![Illegal Israeli Settler Roads Are Surging Across West Bank Since Oct. 7 | WSJ](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RYgwKhzHeGc/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYgwKhzHeGc)

A Wall Street Journal video investigation into the roads and outposts Israeli settlers have built across the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Video: The Wall Street Journal · YouTube

## A record count

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, has logged settler attacks that cause casualties or property damage since 2006. It counted 1,189 in 2023, 1,420 in 2024 and 1,828 in 2025, according to the agency’s figures as cited by the European Union. In 2025 the attacks reached about 280 communities and [averaged five a day](https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/humanitarian-situation-update-352-west-bank). October 2025, during the olive harvest, set the monthly record at 264. Settlers killed nine Palestinians and injured 838 that year. OCHA later put the 2025 total at 1,836, [Middle East Eye reported](https://middleeasteye.net/news/west-bank-nearly-20-israeli-settler-attacks-target-palestinians-day-mass-violence), and said 2026 was running at 6.7 attacks a day, with more than 1,600 so far.

Israel’s army counts differently but finds the same direction. It recorded 867 “nationalistic” incidents by Jews in 2025, up from 682 in 2024 though below 1,045 in 2023, and acknowledged it had not cut them enough, [The Jerusalem Post reported](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-883857) in January. The Shin Bet security service has identified 70 people as the worst offenders, with about 250 others involved, aged 12 to about 26. Mr. Minster told *60 Minutes* the hard core numbers up to 500, with up to 1,000 more drifting in and out.

Displacement has followed. From January 2023 to April 2026, settler violence displaced more than 6,400 Palestinians from 130 communities, nearly half of them children, and 48 of those communities emptied entirely, according to OCHA data cited by [the advocacy group DAWN](https://dawnmena.org/u-s-end-complicity-in-israeli-state-backed-settler-violence/). The largest single case was Ras Ein al-Auja, a Bedouin community near Jericho, where more than 600 people left in January, [OCHA reported](https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/humanitarian-situation-update-356-west-bank). By September, OCHA said, settler attacks and related restrictions were [the leading cause of displacement](https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/opt-humanitarian-situation-report-11-september-2026) in the West Bank this year.

In Jannatah, Hassan Faraj told *60 Minutes* that 20 to 25 settlers arrived on March 26. In March, he said, he went with his uncle and his cousin Muhammad to try to reach the cut-off house. Settlers attacked with sticks, stones and tear gas, and one of three armed men shot Muhammad in the head. Then, he said, they beat his uncle, and the uncle’s son, who was already dead, with sticks. Asked whether anyone had been prosecuted, he called it “an open case.” He said the outpost had a plan.

> They steal electricity from the locals and they also steal water. This is their strategy, to make the area unlivable.
>
> — Hassan Faraj, resident of Jannatah, on 60 Minutes, [cbsnews.com](https://cbsnews.com/news/visiting-west-bank-where-israeli-settler-violence-against-palestinians-surging-60-minutes-transcript/)

[OCHA recorded](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ocha-humanitarian-situation-report-2-april-2026/) that on March 26 settlers shot and killed a 37-year-old Palestinian man and injured two others near Jannatah, also called Beit Falouh, when landowners gathered to protest a land takeover. A UN human rights bulletin named the man as Mohammad Al Malhi. *60 Minutes* gave only the cousin’s first name, and it could not be independently confirmed that both accounts describe the same man. That same day five outposts went up, four of them in Area A, the zone the Oslo accords placed under Palestinian control, [Haaretz reported](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-03-27/ty-article/.premium/palestinian-man-from-east-jerusalem-shot-dead-by-israeli-near-bethlehem/0000019d-2cdc-d088-afdf-eede52e60002). Kerem Navot called it unprecedented.

## Why cases close

Yesh Din is an Israeli rights group that represents Palestinian victims. Since 2005 it has followed 1,701 police investigations into offenses by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank. Police closed 93.8 percent of the concluded cases without an indictment, according to [its data sheet published in January 2025](https://www.yesh-din.org/en/data-sheet-law-enforcement-on-israeli-civilians-in-the-west-bank-settler-violence-2005-2024/). Prosecutors filed charges in 109 cases, or 6.6 percent, and 53 ended in full or partial conviction, about 3 percent of the investigations. Most files, the group said, closed on grounds that point to police failing to identify suspects or gather evidence.

Many victims no longer report attacks. In 2024, Palestinians chose not to file a police complaint in 101 of the 153 incidents Yesh Din documented, or 66 percent, and most cited distrust of the Israeli authorities. Police data [reported by Haaretz in July](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-crime/2026-07-08/ty-article/.premium/jewish-nationalist-crime-in-west-bank-up-by-560-since-2019-police-data-shows/0000019f-421a-d085-a3ff-4a7e30840000) showed cases opened over settler crimes against Palestinians rising from 139 in 2019 to 779 in 2025, with 6.6 percent ending in indictment.

![Sheep cast long shadows toward a stone hut with a wooden chair outside, amid olive trees, rocky terraces, and distant tents.](https://rews.cc/img/84cfbaa707a21a60b2e5f794d269822c300f6344.webp)

The strongest tool has been put away. On Nov. 22, 2024, Mr. Katz ended administrative detention, imprisonment without charge, for Jewish settlers, [The Media Line reported](https://themedialine.org/top-stories/israels-dm-ends-administrative-detention-for-west-bank-settlers/). He said such a measure was inappropriate while settlers faced “serious Palestinian terror threats” and “unjustified international sanctions.” At the time, eight settlers were held under the measure, compared with 3,443 Palestinians, [Haaretz reported](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-22/ty-article/.premium/israels-defense-chief-west-bank-settlers-no-longer-subject-to-detention-without-trial/00000193-5314-d199-af9b-57dcd0c60000). In January 2025 he [freed the settlers still being held](https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-says-settlers-in-administrative-detention-to-go-free-ties-it-to-palestinian-release/).

The Shin Bet also narrowed its own definition. It now counts Jewish attacks as terrorism only when they show a “clear intent to kill” and classifies arson of empty buildings or cars as “serious incidents,” [The Jerusalem Post reported](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-885567). Its director, David Zini, has called the attacks “cases of friction,” according to Haaretz. At a cabinet meeting this month he told Ms. Strock that “the Palestinians do not burn the homes of Jews” and said he might seek to restore administrative detention, [The Times of Israel reported](https://www.timesofisrael.com/shin-bet-chief-warns-he-may-reinstate-administrative-detention-for-violent-settlers/).

On June 9 the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory went further. It found that settler violence “functions as a means of implementing Israeli State policy,” and that Israeli authorities are “directly involved in settler attacks through financial and military support,” [UN News reported](https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167682). The report also described “a de facto collapse of the distinction between settlers and soldiers.” Its count for 2025, seven Palestinians killed and 832 injured, differs slightly from OCHA’s. Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair, summed up the finding.

> Violence by settlers is the direct outcome of Israeli policies that support, enable and protect their actions
>
> — Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, [news.un.org](https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167682)

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations that it systematically enables settler violence, [Arab News noted](https://www.arabnews.com/middle-east/how-would-transferring-law-enforcement-over-israeli-settlers-to-police-deepen-de-facto-annexation-of-the-west-bank-2656435). Mr. Netanyahu has condemned the attacks, *60 Minutes* reported, while his government has spent tens of millions of dollars expanding the farms, arming them and supplying them with American-made off-road vehicles. Roie, a member of Sons of Abraham, a group of religious Jewish activists who try to shield Palestinians, gave *60 Minutes* only his first name. His version was shorter than the commission’s: “It is state violence.”

## The case against the count

Settler leaders dispute most of this. Ms. Strock told the cabinet that “the entire settlement leadership opposes and condemns this kind of violence” and accused Mr. Zini of portraying Palestinians “as if the Arabs are all sweetness and light.” Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador, wrote in August that the problem was not settlers but a “very small minority,” [JTA reported](https://www.jta.org/2026/08/14/israel/u-s-ambassador-calls-settlers-who-sieged-palestinian-homes-in-qusra-terrorists). Regavim, a pro-settlement group, argues that the threat to Area C comes from unauthorized Palestinian building and farming, and it has [urged the government to register](https://www.regavim.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/RegavimHatashaENG24-1601.pdf) the state’s land there.

![A large magnifying glass with a blank cream lens rests over a torn photograph of a ruined doorway on blue paper beside cream scraps and a red circle.](https://rews.cc/img/528185bc767e4e3d5a4e2f246376fbfff4e001e8.webp)

The most detailed statistical challenge came on Sept. 30 in [an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post](https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-910074) by Or Yissachar-Veres, a security analyst who founded a policy institute under the Israel Defense and Security Forum. Using police data obtained under a freedom-of-information request, he wrote that complaints of settler crime fell 57 percent, from 1,066 in 2023 to 614 in 2025. Police investigation files rose from 802 in 2024 to 1,024 in 2025, he wrote, and there were 40 indictments in 2024. He argued that OCHA’s database counts incidents in Jerusalem, and he cited Knesset testimony from a senior police officer that of 191 cases opened, 90 were confirmed as false complaints. “The ‘settler violence’ narrative rests on shaky foundations,” he wrote.

Part of that is accurate on its own terms: complaints to the police did fall. A falling complaint count is a different thing from falling violence, though. Yesh Din found Palestinians declined to complain in two-thirds of the incidents it documented in 2024. The army’s count does not depend on Palestinian complaints, and it rose 27 percent in 2025. The 40 indictments he cites, set against 802 files in 2024, come to about 5 percent, close to Yesh Din’s two-decade rate.

![A vintage woodcut depicts an enormous military helmet looming over a tent, barbed wire fence, rocky terraced hillside, and olive tree.](https://rews.cc/img/0db72ed56fc8b636dcbac61fd06bac178013951b.webp)

The false-complaint testimony has its own history. Mr. Yissachar-Veres identifies the officer as Avishai Mualem, then head of the police intelligence unit for Judea and Samaria. In December 2024, Cmdr. Avishai Muallem, head of investigations and intelligence in the police’s Judea and Samaria District, came under internal investigation on suspicion of running sham probes of Jewish nationalist crimes to advance his career, [The Times of Israel reported](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/top-west-bank-cop-accused-of-faking-probes-of-settler-violence-to-please-ben-gvir-gain-promotion/). His lawyer said the case was politically motivated and that the commander had been carrying out the policies of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It was not clear whether charges followed.

Mr. Minster’s claim that the farms’ right to the land is “legal and it’s ancient” also runs into Israel’s own law. The farms are unauthorized outposts. That is why the government is drafting regulations to legalize them, and why the attorney general approved only portable equipment for them. By the Civil Administration’s own classifications, only about 40 percent of the land the farms hold is state land.

## Sanctions and their limits

Washington once targeted the farms directly. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed Executive Order 14115 on Feb. 1, 2024. Under it, on March 14, 2024, the United States sanctioned Moshe’s Farm and Zvi’s Farm, the first time it had designated an entire outpost, [The National reported](https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/us-news/2024/03/14/us-imposes-sanctions-on-west-bank-settler-outposts-in-latest-punitive-measures/). The State Department said Zvi Bar Yosef used his farm as a base to keep Palestinian farmers off their land.

President Trump revoked the order on Jan. 20, 2025, his first day back in office, [Just Security wrote](https://www.justsecurity.org/107176/trump-west-bank-settler-sanctions/). Four days later the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control removed the designations. Three months after that, Ms. Strock and Mr. Smotrich held their vehicle ceremony at Meitarim Farm.

The administration has since condemned some attacks in strong terms. Settlers from an unauthorized outpost besieged three Palestinian homes in Qusra, one of them owned by a Palestinian American. On Aug. 13, Mr. Huckabee wrote on X that the army and police had gone in at the embassy’s request.

> This is another lie. @usembassyjlm has been VERY involved & the IDF & Israel Police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal. The WH hasn’t “intervened” because we have kept DC…
>
> — **Ambassador Mike Huckabee** @GovMikeHuckabee on X · [August 13, 2026](https://x.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/2087736809069465867)

Haaretz reported that the settlers stayed in the village and were joined by others. A State Department official said the United States condemns “criminal violence by any party in the West Bank,” The Jerusalem Post reported. No U.S. sanctions followed.

Other governments went further. On June 9, Britain, Canada, France and Norway announced sanctions, with Australia and New Zealand having acted the week before. Among the targets was the Farms Association, which the British government said “provides financial and organisational support to Israeli settler farms and outposts in the West Bank.” Another was Artzenu, which Britain said raised money for “tactical military equipment for armed settler squads.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the measures and accused the governments of fueling antisemitism, Al Jazeera reported. Three days later, Haaretz reported the plan to legalize the farms.

## What comes next

Israelis vote on Oct. 27. A Channel 12 poll reported by The Jerusalem Post gave Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party 23 seats and Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud 21, with neither bloc near the 61 needed for a majority. Mr. Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, running with Zehut, and Mr. Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit are polling in single digits.

The farm regulations Mr. Netanyahu ordered fast-tracked were under legal review in June, according to Haaretz. The olive harvest, which produced OCHA’s worst month on record last year, has begun again. Al Jazeera counted at least 19 settler attacks on Oct. 9 alone, citing a P.L.O.-affiliated commission. On Sept. 29, settlers in Jalud [burned a family’s home](https://rews.cc/a/israeli-settlers-burn-palestinian-home-hours-after-family-re-7c0195) hours after the family returned to it.

Americans vote in midterm elections on Nov. 3. Democrats have said that if they win they may limit military aid to Israel, in part because of the West Bank attacks, *60 Minutes* reported. Mr. Minster said he was worried about losing America but did not see it as an existential threat. “But Israel will find other allies,” he said.

## See also

- [Under the Guise of Legality: Israel's Declarations of State Land in the West Bank (full report)](https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files2/201203_under_the_guise_of_legality_eng.pdf) — btselem.org · B'Tselem's detailed account of how Ottoman land law became Israel's main tool for allocating land
- [Return of the Outpost Method: Farm outposts](https://peacenow.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Farm-Outposts-ENG-June-2019.pdf) — peacenow.org.il · Peace Now's 2019 report on the early spread of farm outposts
- [Stemming Israeli Settler Violence at Its Root](https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena-israelpalestine/246-stemming-israeli-settler-violence) — crisisgroup.org · International Crisis Group on the settlers' 'battle over Area C' and herder outposts
- [How settler outposts are seizing new regions of the West Bank](https://www.972mag.com/israel-settler-outposts-west-bank-area-b/) — 972mag.com · +972 Magazine and Local Call investigation into outposts moving into Areas A and B
- [West Bank: Israel-Backed Settler Violence Drives Displacement](https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/08/20/west-bank-israel-backed-settler-violence-drives-displacement) — hrw.org · Human Rights Watch, August 2026, on outposts and displaced communities
- [Israel's ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2026/06/israel-west-bank-ethnic-cleansing/) — amnesty.org · Amnesty International's June 2026 research on herding communities in Area C
- [Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry, June 2026](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-coi-opt-9jun26/) — un.org · Press release and full text of the commission report on settler violence
- [The Settler Strategy Accelerating Palestinian Dispossession](https://jewishcurrents.org/pastoral-settlements-israeli-strategy-accelerating-palestinian-dispossession) — jewishcurrents.org · Jewish Currents long read on pastoral outposts as a settlement strategy

## Sources

- [Israeli settler violence against Palestinians is surging in the West Bank](https://cbsnews.com/news/visiting-west-bank-where-israeli-settler-violence-against-palestinians-surging-60-minutes-transcript/) — cbsnews.com
- [Israeli settlers use sheep to push Palestinians from West Bank homes](https://cbsnews.com/news/west-bank-palestinians-israeli-settlers-sheep-violence-60-minutes/) — cbsnews.com