NEW YORK CITY: The West Bank is nearing collapse and Israel is advancing a “de facto annexation” of the territory through the acceleration of settlement construction, mass displacements and record levels of settler violence, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s deputy special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the crisis engulfing the occupied territory was being overshadowed by other events in the region even as it reaches a tipping point after decades of unresolved conflict.
“While the fragile ceasefire in Gaza and regional tensions consume much of the international community’s attention, the West Bank is at the breaking point,” he said, describing a pattern in which Palestinian communities are forcibly displaced from their villages before settlers move onto the vacated land.
Seventy-six Palestinians, including 18 children, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank so far this year, and three Israelis have died in confrontations with Palestinians and an alleged ramming attack. About 127 Palestinian communities have faced full or partial displacement since January 2023, 47 of them wiped out entirely, which has affected more than 6,390 people.
In 2026 alone, about 3,800 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, have been displaced by settler violence, demolitions or evictions.
The UN has documented more than 1,430 attacks by settlers this year, which have caused casualties or property damage in about 260 Palestinian communities, Alakbarov said. Many of them took place in the presence of Israeli forces.
He cited in particular a rampage on July 24 in Nablus Governorate, during which settlers attacked the village of Tell, triggering clashes that left four Palestinians and two Israeli security personnel dead. This was followed by further attacks on the villages of Urif and Sarra.
Settler violence, once concentrated in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli military and civil control, is now increasingly reported in Areas A and B, he said, which are under full Palestinian civil control and partial Palestinian security control.
Between Aug. 5 and 7, Israeli forces conducted a large-scale raid on the Qalandia refugee camp, during which dozens of people were injured and more than 60 were arrested or detained.
Israeli forces also entered the UN Relief and Works Agency’s Kalandia Training Centre without authorization on July 27 while classes were in session, a violation of the inviolability of UN premises, Alakbarov said.
Alongside the violence, Israeli planning authorities have advanced or approved about 12,360 housing units in the West Bank this year, 7,200 in Area C and 5,160 in East Jerusalem, he added.
He noted that Israel has allocated about $431 million to build 34 new settlements that were approved this year, funding that UN officials said was being used to strengthen Israel’s hold on the West Bank and is blocking Palestinian statehood.
Alakbarov also flagged what he described as an unprecedented move: an Israeli military seizure order for privately owned land in Area A near Qabatiya, south of Jenin, to build a road linking two newly approved settlements. It is the first reported seizure of land in Area A explicitly for settlement infrastructure.
He warned that the financial crisis the Palestinian Authority is facing was compounding the instability; Israeli authorities are withholding about $6 billion in tax revenues and other duties they collect on behalf of the Palestinians, which has left the PA unable to pay full salaries of public-sector workers or deliver basic services.
He also warned of another looming threat to Palestinian financial stability from Sept. 1, after Israeli banks said they intend to terminate correspondent banking service arrangements for the processing of shekel transactions. These services are essential because the Palestinian economy relies on the Israeli shekel but lacks direct access to a central currency clearing house.
“These are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said. “They are reshaping the West Bank, weakening Palestinian governance and advancing de facto annexation.”
He called for full implementation of Security Council Resolution 2803, which endorsed the US-led plan to end the war in Gaza, and the UN General Assembly’s New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.
He also welcomed preparations for Palestinian legislative elections scheduled to take place on Nov. 28.
Hannan Sulieman, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, told the council that children were bearing the brunt of the deterioration in the West Bank.
She said a grandmother told UNICEF workers she was afraid to take out the rubbish because of near-daily attacks by settlers, and had covered her windows with corrugated iron after an incendiary device was thrown into her kitchen while her grandchildren were inside.
It has been verified that 174 Palestinian children were killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between January 2024 and the end of July this year, an average of more than one a week, Sulieman said, and more than 1,500 were injured, nearly half of them by live ammunition. Three Israeli children were killed and 15 injured during the same period.
More than 800,000 children face barriers to safe education because of school closures, insecurity and damaged infrastructure, she added, and more than 900 additional barriers to movement have gone up across the West Bank in the past two and a half years, restricting access to healthcare and fresh water.
At least 355 Palestinian children from the West Bank are in Israeli military detention, Sulieman said, the highest number in eight years, with 164 of them held under administrative detention without charge or trial. Detained children have reported violence, other ill treatment and conditions leading to extreme weight loss and scabies infections, she added.
“Behind every statistic is a child … a child afraid to walk to school … a child recovering from a gunshot wound … a child held in detention,” Sulieman said as she called on UN member states to protect children, halt forced displacements, safeguard access to essential services, and ensure humanitarian operations are able to reach those in need.
