Palestinian farmer and his children check the olive trees uprooted by an Israeli military raid August 24, 2025.
As Israel escalates its genocide in Gaza, it’s also stepping up its multi-pronged campaign of terror, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
The West Bank is the area of historic Palestine west of the Jordan River (on the east side of what is now Israel). It is home to nearly three million Palestinians and has been mandated by the United Nations to be part of a future Palestinian state. It has been under military occupation since it was seized by Israel through war in 1967.
It is a basic principle of international law that a country that is occupying a territory cannot just take over that territory and absorb it. But since 1967, Israel—with U.S. backing—has violated international law and flooded the West Bank with illegal settlements and 500,000 settlers.
This past week, the Israeli government took another major step in this direction, granting final approval to the “E-1” (East One, for just east of Jerusalem) settlement project and the construction of about 3,400 new housing units. This project would effectively split Palestinian territory in two, cutting off one of the few remaining land links between major Palestinian cities in the north such as Ramallah and those in the south such as Bethlehem, and making a contiguous Palestinian state nearly if not totally impossible.
The right-wing Israeli fascists now dominating the government, whose goal is the complete annexation of the West Bank, stated that E-1 “buries the idea of a Palestinian state.”
This project had been blocked for some 20 years due to U.S. pressure. For decades the U.S. rulers felt that keeping alive—at least in words—the so-called “Two-State Solution” was important in maintaining Middle East stability and advancing their imperialist interests.
Now, the Trump regime effectively OKed E-1 by not criticizing Israel and having U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee state on Israeli radio that the decision was Israel’s to make.
“The West Bank is nearly 6,000 kilometers squared in size, and it has been the prize for Israel,” Palestinian writer and journalist Mariam Barghouti told Democracy Now!. “Israel is not engaging in just a war on Gaza. It is engaging in a war of annihilation of Palestinians.”
Palestinians see their homes bulldozed by Israeli military in the West Bank village of Qabatiya, August 4, 2025. Photo: AP
Israeli Military Uproots 3,000 Olive Trees, Terrorizes Palestinian Village of al-Mughayyir
On August 21, the Israeli military (IDF) launched a brutal assault on the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir. It claimed it was searching for someone who had attacked a nearby illegal Israeli settlement, but in the process it terrorized villagers by rampaging in their homes, destroying property, and damaging and confiscating their cars among other abuses.
Israeli military uproots thousands of Palestinian olive trees in West Bank | AJ #shorts
Most devastating of all, the IDF uprooted some 3,100 olive trees, which are a crucial part of Palestinian life, economy, and culture. Olive trees can be hundreds of years old.
Since 1967, more than 800,000 olive trees on Palestinian land have been uprooted by Israeli authorities and settlers. Some estimate the actual total may be one million.
The IDF’s Central Command chief has described such assaults as "shaping"—“part of his policy of converting Palestinian land into areas for military use.”
In addition to uprooting olive trees in al-Mughayyir, the army has demolished homes in the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps in order to create wide roads enabling army access.
The events in al-Maghayyir are part of a larger, escalating pattern in which West Bank Palestinians are increasingly subjected to terror by mobs of heavily armed, rabidly racist “settlers.” These thugs rampage across the West Bank terrorizing and brutalizing unarmed Palestinian farmers with impunity.1
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 905 Palestinians in the West Bank, including at least 181 children, and wounded 7,370 more.
The Trump regime has lifted the few sanctions the U.S. had imposed on these lunatic Nazi settlers under Biden, giving them a bright green light for further racist, anti-Palestinian mayhem and terror.