Summary of Settler and Occupation Forces Violations: April 2025 Report

Throughout the month of April, ‘Israel’ relentlessly continued its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, in conjunction with the complete closure of all crossings since the resumption of the conflict on 18 March. Meanwhile, the occupation’s military offensive in the northern West Bank has been escalating nonstop since January 21, intensifying tensions and upheaval in the region. The following summary reviews the most prominent attacks by the occupation army and settler s against Palestinian citizens and their lands during the month of April 2025. This report relies for its information on the reports of the Palestinian Monitoring Group of the Department of Negotiations Affairs of the PLO, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, and the reports of the Colonial Activities Monitoring Authority in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (POICA) and Peace Now.

The Genocidal Campaign of Systematic Extermination

This month, Israel intensified its brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip, expanding ground operations while keeping all border crossings sealed shut for a staggering 60 consecutive days—since March 2.
Since October 7, 2023, till the end of April, the death toll has surged to 52,400 Palestinians, with another 118,014 wounded. This includes 2,308 killed and 5,973 injured just since March 18, when Israel reignited its relentless land, sea, and air bombardment. Nowhere is safe—not even in areas declared “safe zones” by the Israeli army, like Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, where civilians were explicitly ordered to flee. Israel bombed them despite this forced evacuation.

Among the dead are 18,000 children.
Let that sink in: 311 of those children were born and killed during the war. Another 50 perished from hunger. 17 died from the bitter cold. Israel has killed 12,400 women, 1,411 medical workers, 113 civil defense responders, 214 journalists, 754 police officers and aid security personnel, and 409 humanitarian workers—including 291 U.N. staff.
Israel has completely wiped out 2,200 Palestinian families, leaving no survivors. In 5,120 other families, only one person is left alive.

Israel did not stop at bombing civilians—it attacked hospitals.
The Israeli military launched assaults on the Kuwaiti field hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Durra Children’s Hospital in Gaza City, rendering them inoperable. Only 22 hospitals remain partially functional across the Strip: 4 in North Gaza, 11 in Gaza City, 3 in Deir al-Balah, and 4 in Khan Younis. Not a single hospital is operating in Rafah.

More than 70% of Gaza’s territory remains under forced evacuation orders since March 18.
This includes entire zones near the border and along Wadi Gaza, occupied by Israeli forces since March 20, accounting for half of the entire Strip. These evacuation orders span the entire Rafah Governorate (100% of its area), 84% of North Gaza, 78% of Gaza City, 51% of Khan Younis, and 41% of Deir al-Balah. Over 423,000 Palestinians have been newly displaced since March 18 alone.

Israel’s subjugation strategies target more than just bodies—they wage a relentless assault on minds.
Some 55% of temporary education facilities—259 out of 570—have shut down, disrupting the education of over 140,000 children. 90 public schools that reopened during the ceasefire, serving 90,000 students, are closed again. Another 171 temporary education spaces—30% of those opened in early 2025—are gone. The war has stolen at least 17 months of education after a brief 42-day truce.
Israel’s bombs didn’t spare schools: 509 schools and universities have been directly targeted, killing 13,000 students. An estimated 785,000 students have been denied education throughout the war. And 800 teachers and education workers have been killed.

By the end of April, Gaza marks 60 days of total border lockdown, and complete blockade, an act of collective punishment designed to starve a population.
Israel has blocked 37,400 aid and fuel trucks, and deliberately targeted 29 soup kitchens and 37 aid distribution centers. Denying baby formula, nutritional supplements, and all forms of humanitarian assistance has led to over 70,000 children being hospitalized for severe malnutrition.

Statistics of Israeli Violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem

Martyrs and the Wounded:

In the month of April alone, 18 Palestinians were killed—including six children, one woman, and two prisoners who died in Israeli custody. The bloodiest toll came from Jenin and Nablus, each recording 6 martyrs, followed by Ramallah and Al-Bireh with 3. Among the dead, 2 were assassinated in targeted killings by the Israeli military, while 6 others were gunned down during violent raids on Palestinian cities and villages.
At least 143 Palestinians were wounded, including 30 children, one woman, and several elderly citizens.

Since the beginning of the year, Israel’s occupation forces have killed 118 Palestinians across the West Bank—23 of them children. A staggering 90% of these killings occurred in the northern West Bank, specifically in Jenin, Tubas, Tulkarem, Nablus, Qalqilya, and Salfit—turning these provinces into a war zone under daily siege and terror.

Arrests and Raids on Residential Areas:

Israel’s military occupation rampaged through the West Bank and Jerusalem this month, arresting 781 Palestinians, including 23 children and 8 women—one of them a university student. Hebron was hit hardest with 161 arrests, followed by Nablus with 130, Tulkarem with 101, Jenin with 93, and Ramallah with 76. The rest were snatched from Jerusalem, Qalqilya, Tubas, Salfit, Bethlehem, and Jericho.
This is not law enforcement—it’s a campaign of intimidation.

The Israeli army carried out a staggering 1,190 raids on Palestinian residential areas across the West Bank and Jerusalem. Ramallah topped the list with 177 incursions, closely followed by 175 in Nablus. The remaining raids spread across Jerusalem, Jenin, Tubas, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Salfit, Jericho, Bethlehem, and Hebron—effectively blanketing the West Bank with military aggression.

The occupation campaign in the northern West Bank has been ongoing since January 21—and it shows no signs of slowing down. The Israeli army has established military outposts inside refugee camps, bulldozed vital infrastructure, and forcibly displaced tens of thousands who still cannot return to their homes in Tulkarem and Jenin. Entire neighbourhoods surrounding these camps are being systematically emptied in an aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering.

Systematic Demolition of Homes and Infrastructure:

Since March 1, Israeli bulldozers have levelled 152 Palestinian homes and structures across the occupied West Bank, with the heaviest destruction concentrated in Tubas and Hebron. That number marks a sharp spike compared to 87 demolitions in March alone. On top of that, 46 additional Palestinian structures were slapped with demolition or construction freeze orders, under the tired pretext of “no permit.” Most of these threats were issued in Hebron (16) and Ramallah (14).

Israel’s favorite excuse for demolishing Palestinian homes is the lack of building permits—permits that Israel systematically refuses to issue. Authorities deliberately avoid approving zoning plans for Palestinian communities in Area “C,” forcing families to build without permits to meet basic needs—either due to population growth or forced migration toward Areas “A” and “B,” which comprise just 36% of the West Bank’s land, yet house 86% of its population.

In just the first quarter of 2025, Israeli authorities demolished or confiscated 431 Palestinian structures, displacing 554 Palestinians, including 263 children. Compare that to 421 demolitions and 813 displaced people in the last quarter of 2024—the pace of destruction is accelerating. Of these, 335 structures were in Area “C” and 55 in Jerusalem, part of a deliberate, methodical erasure of Palestinian presence on their own land.

Forced Land Grabs and Bulldozing Operations:

During the reporting period, Israeli occupation authorities grabbed 54 dunams of Palestinian land through four military land seizure orders—each masked as “security needs” while fuelling the settler-colonial expansion machine:

• A military order snatched 45 dunams from the village of Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, to create a “buffer zone” around the Efrat settlement.
• Another order seized 2,906 dunams from Arab Al-Ta’amra in Bethlehem, in addition to 16.99 dunams previously declared “state land,” all to carve out a buffer around the Nokdim settlement.
• A third order stripped 1,452 dunams from the lands of Artas village and Bethlehem city, to pave a new settler-only highway.
• The fourth order expropriated 4,344 dunams from Silwad, near Ramallah, for yet another settler road, linking the Tel al-Asur military base to the main road between Silwad and Deir Jarir.

These are not isolated incidents—they’re part of a land grab frenzy. In 2024 alone, Israeli authorities issued military orders to seize nearly 200,000 dunams of Palestinian land.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have bulldozed dozens of dunams of Palestinian land throughout the occupied West Bank. The worst devastation hit Jenin refugee camp, as well as Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps, where homes and infrastructure were ground to rubble.
And it didn’t stop there—Israeli soldiers and settlers uprooted 1,168 olive trees, the lifeblood of Palestinian agriculture and culture, in Hebron, Salfit, Ramallah, and Nablus.
This is not defense. It’s systematic erasure—tree by tree, dunam by dunam.

Violent Settler Attacks:

This month alone, Israeli settlers carried out 208 violent assaults on Palestinian civilians, their property, and their sacred sites. The attacks included storming agricultural lands, planting them to assert control, or outright destroying Palestinian crops and trees. In many cases, settlers launched coordinated assaults on villages and towns, firing on homes, torching vehicles, and looting or confiscating personal property—all carried out with the explicit complicity of the occupation forces.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the first quarter of 2025, reports documented 356 settler attacks, which forcibly displaced 38 Palestinian families, totalling 223 individuals, including 113 children. The majority were from bedouin and pastoral communities, targeted precisely because of their vulnerability.
These are not “fringe incidents”—they are part of an orchestrated campaign of terror and displacement, designed to clear the land of its Indigenous inhabitants.

Settlement Expansion:

In April alone, Israeli occupation authorities reviewed 27 new zoning plans aimed at expanding illegal settlements across the West Bank and Jerusalem. Ten of these plans were approved, while 17 others were submitted for future approval. The March plans alone targeted 3,030 dunams of Palestinian land—a land grab in slow motion, masked in paperwork.

At the beginning of April, the Higher Planning Council greenlit discussions for building 2,545 new housing units in the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Beitar Illit. By the end of the month, it reviewed even more expansion—this time in Giv’at Ze’ev, Kfar Tapuah, Talmon, and Ma’ale Amos.
The total number of settler units approved for construction in the first four months of 2025? A jaw-dropping 15,190 units—more than the entire total promoted during all of 2023, which stood at 12,349.
This isn’t urban planning—it’s colonization with legal cover.

Since December 2024, the Higher Planning Council has held weekly meetings—not to serve civilians, but to accelerate settlement expansion. And now, with the elimination of the requirement for the Israeli Defense Minister’s approval, the floodgates have opened.
These weekly sessions are designed to normalize apartheid planning, mute international criticism, and fast-track the theft of Palestinian land under the guise of bureaucracy.

A joint report by Kerem Navot and Peace Now has exposed a coordinated settler campaign to seize vast swathes of West Bank land—all with the explicit backing of the Israeli government.
According to the report, a small group of settlers has taken control of nearly 14% of the West Bank—that’s 786,000 dunams—by setting up over 100 illegal settler grazing outposts, forcibly displacing dozens of Palestinian Bedouin communities in the process.

The report lays bare how this land theft is carried out: settlers establish “grazing outposts”, then use force and terror to drive Palestinian farmers and shepherds off their land. Violence, threats, and systematic harassment push local communities into exile—leaving the land ripe for takeover and the erection of yet more settler enclaves.

The findings are chilling: over 60 Palestinian communities have already been displaced due to these policies. At least 14 settler grazing outposts now sit on or near these stolen lands. Shockingly, only 40% of the confiscated land is even classified as “state land.”
Even more damning, 41% of it lies within so-called “firing zones,” where entry is forbidden to civilians—including settlers themselves. And 4.4% of the seized land falls within Areas “A” and “B”, which are supposedly under Palestinian Authority control.

The report makes one thing clear: these actions are not rogue. They are institutionally supported and financially fuelled by the Israeli government, carried out with complete disregard for both local and international law, designed to erase a people and colonize their history. What unfolds is a ruthless strategy of domination, where impunity is the only rule.

NOTE: This text is adapted from original Arabic article.