January 11, 2026 Essay: A People in Peril
Could the world be witnessing the permanent dispersal of the Palestinian people? This question is prompted not simply by what is occurring in Gaza, but by what is occurring in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians are being displaced at a rapid pace as their communities are erased.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between October 7, 2023 (when Hamas attacked Israel) and December 7, 2025, 1,039 Palestinians—at least 225 of them children—were killed in the occupied West Bank. These deaths coincided with a violent campaign by Israeli settlers to drive Palestinians off their lands. At the same time, the Israeli government has accelerated the approval of settlements in the West Bank. Three years after Israel took control of the West Bank, after the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, there were an estimated 1500 settlers. Today, there are at least 770,000. On December 21, 2025, the Israeli government approved 19 new settlements, raising the total number of approved settlements to 200, which is an increase from 140 just three years ago. When these settlements were approved, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, declared: “We will continue to develop, build, and settle the inherited land of our ancestors with faith in the righteousness of our path.”
On December 20, 2025, the New York Times offered detailed reporting on the systematic campaign of intimidation and violence being used by settlers to displace Palestinians. According to the reporting of the New York Times, and independently confirmed by Israeli human rights organizations, the Israeli Defense Force, which retains authority over the West Bank, frequently turns a blind eye to the violence being perpetrated by the settlers, while at the same time facilitating the displacement of the Palestinians in response to that violence. When official action is taken in response to unprovoked violence against Palestinians, that action is anemic at best.
An Israeli settler, who is an Israeli reserve soldier serving in a regional defense unit, was filmed running his all-terrain-vehicle over a 23-year-old-Palestinian man as he knelt in prayer on the roadside outside of Ramallah. Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli military veterans critical of the Israeli occupation, has referred to the regional defense units—which have been responsible for many other attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank—as “no more than settler militias in uniform.” The IDF said that the soldier’s weapon has been confiscated and that he’s been suspended due to the “severity of the incident.” Israeli police released him from custody after a few days. He was placed under house arrest for five days, and ordered not to approach the village where the incident occurred. This same individual was involved in an earlier incident that day in a village north of Ramallah. In that incident, he opened fire on Palestinians injuring a young man.
In January 2025, the Israeli watchdog group Yesh Din reported that across more than 1,700 reports of religious or politically motivated hate crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past two decades, nearly 94% of them were closed without any indictment and only 3% resulted in a conviction. At the same time, some 8,000 Palestinians are currently being held indefinitely in Israeli prisons without trial, many of them under “administrative detention orders” which prevent detainees, and their lawyers, from reviewing the evidence against them. Settlers may not be held under the same orders. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the goal was “to convey a clear message of strengthening and encouraging the settlements.”
As this systematic campaign of expulsions continues, the Israeli government, in late December, became the first country to recognize the break-away region of Somaliland. Earlier last year, it was reported that the United States and Israeli governments had asked whether Somaliland would accept displaced Palestinians. Somaliland denied that such conversations occurred.
— Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J., Associate Pastor