UN Agency Records 1,300 Settler Attacks and 2,300 Displacements in West Bank Since January

Israeli military vehicles roll into Nablus ahead of groups of settlers heading to Joseph's Tomb. Within minutes, roads close. Palestinian residents in surrounding neighborhoods stay indoors as tear gas drifts through the streets. The visits typically last a few hours, but the lockdown around them halts movement across the area, according to firsthand accounts from the city.

Joseph's Tomb sits inside Nablus, in Area A, where the Palestinian Authority holds nominal jurisdiction. The Oslo Accords carved out a specific arrangement allowing supervised settler access to the site. That exception does not amount to a formal expansion of Israeli control over the city. But each incursion demonstrates, in practical terms, who can order streets closed and who must stay inside when it happens.

The numbers behind the pattern

The Nablus incursions are one entry point into a broader trend documented by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. OCHA recorded more than 1,300 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage across the West Bank in the first seven months of 2026, averaging more than six a day. More than 2,300 Palestinians have been displaced since January by settler attacks and related access restrictions, the agency reported.

By late August, OCHA had recorded 23 Palestinians killed and more than 1,040 injured in settler attacks this year. On current figures, Palestinians are being injured directly by settlers at a rate of more than three a day, up from two a day in 2025 and one every three days in 2020, according to OCHA's tallies.

Qusra: outpost, roads, infrastructure

The town of Qusra, near Nablus, shows how the pattern converges on the ground. In August, settlers established a new outpost in Area B near three Palestinian families in the Ras Al Ein area, according to OCHA. The agency documented an increased settler and military presence, damage to water and electricity infrastructure, and severe restrictions on the families' movement. By late August, two of the four roads connecting Ras Al Ein to Qusra were under Israeli control.

Mohammad Abdul Aziz Azem, mayor of Sebastia municipality, described the pressure on Palestinian communities as part of a deliberate effort to empty land of its residents and confine them to shrinking population centers.

"This is being pursued through organised terrorism supported by Netanyahu's government, amid international silence and the absence of effective deterrent sanctions," Azem said.

Dr Mona Abu Hamdiya, a researcher in heritage and archaeology, pointed to the political weight carried by sites like Joseph's Tomb.

"Turning religious and heritage sites into instruments of political conflict is a dangerous development, as it conflates the sacred with the settlement project and transforms collective memory into a means of generating violence and forcibly reshaping the geography," Abu Hamdiya said.

None of these incursions individually rewrites a map. But OCHA's own figures, repeated closures at Joseph's Tomb, and the loss of road access around Qusra describe a cumulative process: exceptions that recur often enough to become the operating condition of Palestinian life in parts of the West Bank.