While many global leaders continue to focus primarily on the Iran war and Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza, United Nations officials are sounding the alarm over what they call an “unprecedented” level of settler violence against Palestinian communities that’s pushed the West Bank to a “breaking point.”The U.N. Security Council held its second meeting on the Middle East in two weeks on Tuesday as experts and ambassadors discussed the attacks, arrests, demolitions and displacement in the occupied territory. According to the U.N., there have been more than 1,430 incidents of Israeli settler violence affecting about 260 Palestinian communities this year alone.“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,” U.N. Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov told the council, saying settler violence has reached “unprecedented levels.”“The pattern is clear,” he continued. “Palestinian populations are increasingly being forcibly displaced from villages across the West Bank before settlers seize the vacated land.”An elderly Palestinian man approaches Israeli soldiers and an armored military vehicle during a settler incursion in the Old City of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank on Aug. 11, 2026. Israeli forces deployed checkpoints in the area amid long-running movement restrictions in Hebron's Israeli-controlled H2 area, where Palestinian residents face repeated closures, searches and access limits around the city's historic center. Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesAt least 75 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year as of Monday, according to Alakbarov. More than 3,800 — nearly half of whom are children — have been displaced by settler violence, demolitions and evictions in the same time period.The U.N.’s human rights office said last month that settler violence in the West Bank is at an “all-time high” — highlighting the deadly combination of Israeli forces and settlers often acting together to attack and demolish Palestinian communities while Palestinians themselves face movement restrictions that prevent access to some essential services.“Settler terror is not spontaneous,” U.N. independent experts said in a statement on Monday in response to the escalation of attacks. “It operates with the protection, and often the participation, of the Israeli occupation forces, in tandem with record settlement expansion, mass demolitions, land seizures and the prolonged sealing of refugee camps – all sustained and encouraged by members of the Israeli cabinet.”Settlers near Nablus have been attacking two Palestinian families in their homes since Sunday, according to the BBC, with the families posting on social media that their supplies are nearing empty. The Israel Defense Forces publicly denounced the attacks as “reprehensible” and condemned a newly established illegal settler outpost near the village. Israeli forces demolish the home of Palestinian Farouk Ramadan using explosives in the West Bank village of Tal in Nablus, on Aug. 11, 2026. Ramadan was killed on July 24 while resisting a raid on his village by Israeli settlers seizing Palestinian land.Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty ImagesIsraeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said Tuesday that Israel prosecutes settler violence while condemning the council for not bringing up attacks by Palestinians. He also claimed that Iran’s funneling of weapons to proxy groups like Hamas — which is based in Gaza, not the West Bank — threatens Jewish settlers.“We condemn this violence. We prosecute these crimes. We hold perpetrators accountable,” Danon claimed, saying Israeli authorities recorded 116 incidents of extremism in June. Jennifer Locetta, who represented the U.S. at Tuesday’s meeting, applauded Israel’s actions to counter settler violence.According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, last week’s indictment against settler Yonin Levi was the first time Israel has formally charged an Israeli for killing a Palestinian in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Levi was indicted in the July 2025 killing of Palestinian community activist Awdah Hathaleen in south Hebron.On Tuesday, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces had arrested at least 23 Palestinians — including children, according to Wafa News — and demolished several homes across the West Bank. Soldiers also arrested more than 60 Palestinians in a large-scale operation in the Qalandia refugee camp over the span of two days earlier this month.Demolitions don’t just impact Palestinian homes, as U.K. Ambassador to the U.N. Sarah MacIntosh pointed out. On Aug. 4, Israeli forces demolished three donor-funded classrooms at the Shaab al-Butum grade school in the Masafer Yatta area, in what Palestinian officials say is the latest attack on educational institutions serving Bedouin communities.A child holds a sign near the rubble of Shaab al-Butum School, where Israeli forces demolished three classrooms, in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Aug. 4, 2026. The Palestinian Ministry of Education announced that the Israeli military had issued demolition orders against 14 schools in Masafer Yatta and surrounding areas, warning that the orders threaten the education of more than 1,500 primary and secondary students.Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesDespite the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal, the Israeli government recently announced plans to approve more illegal settlements in the territory.“Calls from pro-settler government figures to annex the West Bank, alongside continued settler attacks, including on mosques, are likely to fuel further violence ahead of the Israeli national elections,” said Nasser Khdour, Middle East assistant research manager at the global conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data. Alakbarov and some ambassadors stressed that the escalating violence threatens to undermine the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2803, which was adopted following last year’s Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement and supports President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza.“We must be clear-eyed about what is taking place. These are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” he said. “They are reshaping the West Bank, weakening Palestinian governance and advancing de-facto annexation.”The resolution must be immediately implemented in conjunction with the New York Declaration, Alakbarov continued. The declaration is widely endorsed by the U.N. and lays out a roadmap to create a viable and sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.