What the data really shows about ‘settler violence’ in the West Bank - opinion

Fresh sanctions were recently imposed against Israel by the UK, France, and other governments, which cited – as did British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband – “ethnic cleansing perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

This argument was also front and center in the recent UN General Assembly, in a series of heated anti-Israeli speeches by world leaders. Yet newly obtained exclusive data from the Israeli Police through a freedom of information request cast serious doubt over the widely repeated “settler violence” narrative.

The “settler violence” campaign has been extremely effective in convincing European governments, and even some supporters of Israel, that hordes of Jewish terrorists attacking Palestinians are one of the top security challenges of the Middle East and pose a strategic threat to the prospects for peace.

Yet very rarely do politicians present verifiable evidence that illustrates what exactly they mean by “settler violence.” Statements often include a smoke screen of ominous warnings but provide few measurable metrics.

The data we obtained reveal a striking gap between the dire rhetoric and the unvarnished numbers.

First, nationalist violence among Israeli settlers has seen a sharp, 57% decline between 2023 and 2025. October 7 and the ensuing war have actually led to a sharp decrease in cases, amid a heightened military presence throughout the territories and the attention diverted to Gaza: 969 complaints in 2022, 1,066 in 2023, then 679 in 2024, and merely 614 incidents in 2025.

Unlike the acceptable method in the US, the data provided by the Israeli Police covers all complaints and hotline reports, without filtering out verified incidents.

But even taken at face value, this represents a crime rate of 3.07 per 10,000 people, an extremely low rate compared to Palestinian terrorism, crime in Israel’s other regions, antisemitic incidents in Europe, or crime rates in many large US cities.

Among Palestinians, abundant terrorist attacks, including murder and foiled suicide bombings, amount to 37.1 cases per 10,000 Palestinians – more than 12 times more than Israeli settlers.

Second, qualitatively – not just quantitatively – these figures represent not cases of murder, but delinquency, such as property theft, agricultural vandalism, or vehicle arson.

About 5-7% of the counted reports covered settlers confronting Israeli security forces rather than attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Vandalism and assault are doubtlessly crimes, but considering them as a state-sponsored effort of ethnic cleansing or as terrorism is absurd.

Third, openings of investigation files by the Police Interrogation Unit soared by 27% year over year, from 802 in 2024 to 1,024 in 2025, alongside dozens of criminal indictments – 40 in 2024 alone.

Most cases are prosecuted by the State Attorney’s Office, rather than the Police, and logically many more indictments are filed beyond these. This directly contradicts the widely quoted claim that Israel does little to prosecute perpetrators – even actively abetting them.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Issac Herzog, and even US Ambassador Mike Huckabee all personally condemned these crimes as “criminal acts of violence” that are committed by “a handful of hooligans who are violating the law, disturbing the IDF in fulfilling its missions, and harming Israel’s global reputation.”

The data follows the narrative

A larger prism tells us that vocal critics of “settler violence,” including heads of state, rely on extremely problematic figures, provided by impartial actors. The UN as well as the EU have both come under criticism for abandoning basic professional standards in their reporting on Israel.

The same goes for virtually any topic concerning Israel: Miliband cited the widely repeated and inflated figure of 70,000 fatalities in Gaza, a figure provided by the UN but has already been debunked as exclusively relying on data provided by Hamas’ “Health Ministry” – by the UN’s own admission.

The same applies to “settler violence,” where the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cited as its sources “municipal authorities, Palestinian District Coordination Offices, UN agencies, human rights organizations, and media reports,” without naming any specific sources.

As previously revealed, a look at the OCHA database reveals that of the 6,285 alleged “settler violence” incidents it cites, 27.1% took place in Jerusalem, another 21% covered mere visits by Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (alongside Muslim worshippers and tourists), while others involve tensions between Israeli police and rioters in Jerusalem.

Testifying before the Knesset, the then-commander of the Central Intelligence Unit of the Israeli Police’s Judea and Samaria District, Avishai Mualem, confirmed the above-mentioned steep decline, as well as the false complaints phenomenon by Palestinians and far-left anarchists: “When 191 cases were opened, 90 of them were confirmed as false complaints around the South Hebron Mountain district. … In the Jordan Valley district, there were 70 incidents, of which 50% also ended up as false complaints.”

The EU, on its part, cites the far-left Israeli NGO B’tselem as the exclusive source for its figures. Unsurprisingly, its roughly $3.7 million budget originates primarily from the EU, the UN, and European governments, the same entities that later use the data to compile damning reports on Israel.

B’tselem falsely claims that “settler attacks” against Palestinians have seen a “sharp increase,” and its database includes multiple incidents such as “road blocking,” “verbal confrontations and threats,” and incidents in which “settlers stole a flock of grazing sheep.”

All of these may constitute wrongdoing but are far from fitting neatly within the customary understanding of ethnic cleansing or terrorism – nor are they uncommon in any large city in Europe or in the US.

Much lower crime rate than Baltimore

Indeed, compared with crime statistics elsewhere, 614 complaints of violent crimes attributed to a Jewish population of 462,000, or 3.07 per 10,000 people, is far below the rates in Baltimore (143.4) or New York City (70), representing over 46 and 22 times higher crime rates than Judea and Samaria, respectively.

Judea and Samaria also boast Israel’s lowest overall crime rate, by a wide margin: in 2024, the civil crime rate in Judea and Samaria reached 64 violent cases per 10,000 people, 1.4 times lower than Tel Aviv (91.7), and 2.1 times lower than the South (135.4).

Sharp increase in Palestinian terrorism

These incidents pale especially in comparison to the rate at which Israeli settlers themselves are targeted by Palestinians on a daily basis, including two different attacks last week alone, one of which resulted in the murder of Netanel Shukrun.

Rescuers Without Borders counted 6,389 attacks by Palestinians against Israelis in 2024 and 5,013 attacks in 2025. These figures include murder and shooting attacks, rather than mere vandalism or theft.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) reports a 291% surge in the foiling of “substantial attacks” in Judea and Samaria between 2022 and 2025, in a coordinated effort with the IDF to arrest thousands of terrorists: 472 attacks were foiled in 2022, compared with 1,374 in 2025.

Once again, far from graffiti incidents, these were planned suicide bombings, hostage taking, and explosive cars.

Factoring in both actual and foiled Palestinian attacks, this amounts to 37.1 cases per 10,000 Palestinians – more than 12 times more than Israeli settlers.

Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are routinely targeted by Palestinian terrorism: 71 Israelis were murdered in 2024 and 2025, while 744 were injured. Those victims include three Israelis murdered in January 2025 when a Palestinian gunman opened fire at bus line 55 en route to their settlement and two Israelis, including a 16-year-old, murdered at a gas station near their settlement. The two phenomena are simply incomparable in scale or lethality.

Palestinian state-sponsored terrorism

While the Israel Police has increased the opening of investigation files by 27%, and the Chief Prosecutor’s Office is indicting dozens of suspected offenders, the Palestinian Authority has been leading actual state-sponsored terrorism.

Not only does it fail to investigate Palestinian terrorism, but it actively rewards it by allocating over $10 billion in financial benefits to terrorists over the past decade alone.

While the top brass of Israel’s leadership condemned these delinquent attacks, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas hailed the “martyrs,” a term widely used for terrorists, as the “stars in the sky of the Palestinian nation’s struggle.”

Abbas further stressed before the UN General Assembly that “even if we were left with just one penny, we would pay it to the families of the martyrs and prisoners.”

Based on evidence or a political objective?

The purpose of this analysis is not to excuse violence nor present a whataboutism argument. Anyone who commits a crime should be held accountable to the full extent of the law, as many of them eventually are.

Rather, the point is narrower: to put a widely circulated claim in proportion, and facts ahead of narratives, particularly in a region plagued by genuine terrorism and strategic security threats.

The data showed that while documented incidents of wrongdoing or criminal offenses among the Israeli settler population do occur, the “settler violence” narrative rests on shaky foundations, nor does it fit the established legal definition of ethnic cleansing.

There is no public record of Miliband referring to the genuine ethnic cleansing against Christians in Nigeria, where at least 50,000 people have been murdered, nor in Syria, where Israel ultimately intervened militarily to prevent further bloodshed.

Instead, Miliband dedicated a passionate 21-minute address to 614 cases of vehicle arson and graffiti.

The true objective of the “settler violence” campaign may be much simpler than debate over numbers: serving as a tool in the arsenal of smearing Israel’s very presence in the territories and putting political pressure to make concessions.

Israel, on its part, may do well in making these figures public and accessible, alongside the traditional defense of the overall law-abiding residents in Judea and Samaria.

We are all exposed to disinformation online, and in an online environment inundated with widely repeated claims, verifying them is becoming increasingly harder. Yet heads of state should distinguish facts from politics and take a sober, more balanced approach to an otherwise complicated conflict.

The author is an independent national security analyst and the host of the podcast Underscore. He was the founder and executive director of the David Institute for Security Policy under IDSF – the Israel Defense and Security Forum.