Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes amid record year of settler terror in West Bank

By Anam Alam, The New Arab, 20 August 2026

Israeli settler arson attacks intensify across the West Bank, as Palestinians fear Israel is seeking a pretext for a Gaza-style assault.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank awoke on Thursday to homes in flames after Israeli terrorist settlers carried out fresh arson attacks, with rights groups telling The New Arab that escalating violence has left residents fearing Israel is seeking an excuse to unleash on the territory what it has done in Gaza.

Videos shared online showed flames tearing through a Palestinian home in Khirbet al-Fakheit, west of Yatta in the Hebron area, after settlers entered the community in the early hours of Thursday.

The attack comes amid a record year for settler violence against Palestinians, alongside unprecedented settlement expansion and the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the occupied territory.

Settlers from Otniel, an illegal Israeli settlement built on occupied Palestinian land, entered the area before setting the house ablaze and leaving.

“These attacks might be today's news, but unfortunately, they are daily news for Palestinians in the West Bank,” Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told The New Arab.

“We've been seeing this escalating violence, whether it's taking the form of settler attacks like the arson attack in Hebron, or whether it's military raids and so-called ‘counterterrorism operations’.”

HRW has documented how the violence is increasingly driving the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, with dozens now at risk of erasure.

The rights group says settler attacks have fully or partially displaced 107 Palestinian communities since January 2023. Violence spiked further in March and April this year, with attacks including killings of adults and children, assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property destruction and theft.

But Sanbar said such attacks should not be viewed as isolated acts by rogue settlers, warning were being carried out by organised groups operating with the backing and protection of the Israeli state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, has previously described violent settlers as “juvenile delinquents”, a characterisation Sanbar rejected.

“It's the Israeli state that's providing [settlers] with the funding, with the arms, with the legal cover to commit attacks against Palestinians with complete impunity, and it's not a question of them failing to stop settler violence; it's a question of the Israeli government actively enabling it,” Sanbar said.

The arson attack was unfolding against a broader backdrop of intensifying settler and military pressure across the West Bank.

Israeli forces on Thursday continued raids on the occupied West Bank town of Qusra for an eighth consecutive day, where settler terrorists and soldiers have kept several Palestinian families under siege for nearly a week.

Ziad Odeh, a member of Qusra's municipal council, said Israeli forces had maintained heightened military restrictions on the town, south of Nablus, since launching their latest operation last week.

For Palestinians living through the escalating terror attacks, Sanbar said the fear was increasingly not whether the situation would deteriorate further, but what might provide the trigger.

She said many Palestinians HRW had spoken to feared that Israel was waiting for a pretext for a far broader assault on the occupied territory.

“There is a very real fear and concern amongst Palestinians in the West Bank that the Israeli government is just looking for any excuse to do in the West Bank what they did to Gaza,” Sanbar said.

That fear, she said, comes after years in which Palestinians in the West Bank have faced increasingly harsh treatment, a trend that intensified during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

Sanbar said the events of October 2023 had further weakened what restraints remained on Israel's treatment of Palestinians, making previously understood limits increasingly unclear.

Disclaimer

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab editorial team or CEMAS board.