For the past two and a half years, rarely a day has gone by that Bashar Eid has not feared that settler violence would claim his life or his property in Burin, a Palestinian village near Nablus in the northern West Bank.

In November, Eid was wounded in the neck and hospitalized after coming under attack from extremist settlers as he tended his olive grove outside the town.

More recently, two settlers attempted to set his property on fire. He suffered severe burns across his body, rendering him physically unable to work and incapable of providing financially for his wife and three daughters.

“I sit at home all day, I don’t work… I don’t know what to do… My home is a prison,” he told The Times of Israel. “My oldest daughter is in university… How will I provide her the money [for her studies]?”

Eid’s story reflects a broader reality facing many Palestinians across the West Bank, where things seem bleaker than they have in decades.

But despite being pushed into a corner by rising settler violence, an expanded Israeli military presence, worsening economic conditions, and the absence of a viable political horizon, Palestinians have not lashed out in a way many had predicted a despairing population would.

For decades, Israeli policymakers have been guided by the idea that Palestinians would turn to violence if deprived of hopes for a brighter future. Yet, violent incidents targeting Israelis in the West Bank have fallen off by over 80 percent in the last five years, even as attacks on Palestinians have more than doubled.

But as conditions turn more and more dire, Israeli officials, analysts and Palestinian voices alike warn the current situation may not last.

Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth recently warned that rising settler violence in the West Bank, which he called “Jewish terrorism,” could spark a Palestinian uprising.

“It’s quite a miracle the Palestinian public is still indifferent… but it won’t remain indifferent forever,” he reportedly said.

Similarly, Hani Odeh, former mayor of the West Bank village of Qusra, which has come under repeated attack, recently told The Times of Israel that sustained settler violence would ultimately lead to a violent backlash.

“In the end, there will be an explosion,” he said. “It’s not reasonable to attack residents day after day. You can’t bear it.”

Settler attacks reach new heights

Eid’s 20-dunam (five-acre) grove sits some 300 meters (980 feet) away from the illegal Israeli outpost of Givat Ronen, which was built a decade ago on a hilltop overlooking his property.

But according to Eid, it was after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, which triggered a stifling intensification of security restrictions in the West Bank, that settler violence began reaching unprecedented levels.

Data released earlier this year from the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet shows that settler attacks rose by 27% in 2025 compared to the previous year, though they still fell below 2023 levels. Severe incidents of “nationalistic crime” — classified by Israeli security bodies as terrorism — jumped by more than 50% over 2024.

Findings by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs showed a similar trend, with cases of “attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians that resulted in casualties and/or property damage” having sharply increased in recent years. In 2025, OCHA recorded 1,828 such incidents, compared to 1,449 in 2024, 1,291 in 2023 and 852 in 2022.

While OCHA’s figures do not fully align with those published by the IDF and Shin Bet — likely due to differing criteria and methodologies used to classify incidents — both datasets point to settler violence being a constant pressure on West Bank Palestinians.

The Yesh Din organization, which opposes the settlement movement and monitors settler violence, reported that during the recent 40 days of hostilities with Iran alone, there were 378 incidents of extremist settler violence against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank, with eight Palestinians killed and 200 injured.

The attacks, which occur on a daily basis, largely go unchecked, fueling a sense of impunity among settler extremists. Critics blame the government, which includes far-right politicians who back settlement expansion and appear to have little desire to rein in the........

© The Times of Israel