Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is gravely alarmed by the rapidly escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli state-sponsored violence and settler attacks against Palestinian communities are spiraling out of control. As international attention has shifted to the expanding regional war following Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, extremist settlers have taken advantage of the global distraction to intensify terror against Palestinian civilians. Palestinian villages across the West Bank are facing a wave of attacks, including arson, shootings, and intimidation, which are often carried out in broad daylight and frequently under the watch or protection of Israeli forces. In February 2026, American-Palestinian Nasrallah Abu Siam was murdered by Israeli settlers. In the weeks that followed, two more Palestinian men, Farah Jawdat Hamayel and Thaer Farouk from the village of Abu Falah, were also killed in settler attacks. According to reporting from The Guardian, in just the two weeks since the war on Iran began, Israeli settlers have shot and killed six Palestinian civilians. The scale of the violence is staggering. United Nations figures indicate that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 320 children and more than 30 women, since 2019. Not counted in that statistic are 44 Palestinians whom Israeli settlers have killed during this same period. This violence persists largely because of the almost total impunity granted to perpetrators. Extrajudicial killings and assaults occur regularly, yet accountability remains virtually nonexistent. According to legal data compiled by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the last settler attack that resulted in a homicide indictment occurred in 2019. This reality sends a clear message: violence against Palestinians will go unpunished. Recent events further expose this deeply troubling system of unequal justice. In a shocking incident, a settler struck a Palestinian child with his vehicle in the Hebron area this past week. When an American Jewish activist intervened to help the injured child, the activist was the one charged with incitement and causing damage. Israeli police detained, later arrested, and deported the activist, while allowing the settler responsible for the attack to leave without charge. The activist was reportedly held in harsh conditions without basic needs being met before being forcibly deported. To date, no charges have been filed against the settler involved in the incident. The pattern continued this past weekend. On March 14, Israeli police opened fire on a Palestinian family returning home from a shopping trip, killing a husband, wife, and their two children. Israeli authorities have stated that they are “investigating the incident,” but decades of impunity and several similar cases suggest that accountability is unlikely. These events are not isolated. They represent a consistent and deeply entrenched system of injustice in which one set of laws protects those who perpetrate violence in the name of the state, while another system governs the people living under occupation. Such a system violates the most basic principles of justice, human dignity, and international law. Much of the violence carried out in the West Bank is enabled by the steady flow of weapons entering Israel, including assault rifles and ammunition supplied through U.S. weapons shipments. These weapons frequently end up in the hands of military units and settlers who operate with little oversight and even less accountability. Churches for Middle East Peace calls on the United States government and the international community to urgently focus attention to the escalating crisis in the West Bank. The transfer of weapons that fuel these abuses must end, meaningful accountability must be imposed on those responsible for violence, and the rule of law must apply equally to all. The people of the West Bank deserve protection, dignity, and the basic assurance that their lives are not disposable. The international community must not allow the suffering of Palestinians under occupation to disappear from view while the region descends further into war. | 
