While the world is distracted the West Bank is disappearing before our eyes – what will Ireland do?
I recently returned from the West Bank and what I saw utterly shocked me to my core, but I am even more fearful that with the world’s attention on the war in Iran and the escalating situation across the wider region, the situation facing Palestinians will reach new depths.
I’m not new to the West Bank, having visited there several times with Christian Aid. My most recent trip follows on from a visit almost a year ago to the day - but in that time, the situation has become immeasurably worse. The first thing that struck me was partly symbolic – row after row of Israeli flags on posts along Route 60 from Ramallah to Nablus. There is no indication that you are travelling through Palestine, a country recognised as a sovereign state by 157 countries, including Ireland. Then behind the flags I noticed the new illegal Israeli outposts and settlements and the extensive building work and bulldozers, indicating more to come.
While the world has become almost numb to the huge numbers killed in Gaza, far fewer people are aware that more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank since October 7th 2023. Earlier this month, a young married couple and two of their children were shot dead by Israeli forces while driving their car along a road in an area under Palestinian Authority control in the northern West Bank. Two of the couple's other children were also shot in the same incident but survived.
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes in the West Bank in 2025 due to Israeli military incursions and settler attacks, according to the UN. More Palestinians were displaced in the West Bank in the first three months of this year – nearly 1,700 people - than the entirety of 2025, and the numbers injured in those attacks has sky rocketed. East of Ramallah and in the Jordan Valley, entire Bedouin villages that I visited last year simply no longer exist. Farming families living there were forced from their land to make way for Israeli settlers– rendering them both homeless and without a livelihood overnight.
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Israeli settlers have already begun exploiting the current crisis to grab even more Palestinian land. Our Irish Aid funded partner B’Tselem reported that not long after the first air-raid sirens sounded in Israel, settler militias set out to attack Palestinian communities across the West Bank, resulting in beatings, arson attacks, forcible displacement and even killings of Palestinians.
Dozens of armed settlers descended on the village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, and shot dead two Palestinian men, injuring three more. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli army were on hand to support the settlers during the incident.
Some attacks can be less overtly violent than others but are no less menacing and the end goal is always the same. It was in a village called Fasiyal near Jericho that I saw firsthand the cruelly creative ways in which Israeli settlers routinely make life a misery for Palestinians to force them from their land.
I saw Israeli settlers unleash a dumpster truck load of rotten dates on a Palestinian family’s land next to their home. The smell was putrid and quickly attracted a large swarm of flies. Our partner shared how settlers regularly drive up to the home and blare music at all hours as well as fly drones overhead. Settlers have also been driving their herds onto the family’s land to eat the vital pasture needed for the family’s own livestock. A couple of weeks ago, this family’s home was demolished.
Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and are also the engine of the occupation. There are now over 700,000 Israeli settlers and hundreds of settlements located in occupied Palestinian territory—the majority of them in ‘Area C’ which is the part of the West Bank directly controlled by the Israeli military.
Settlements span over 40% of the West Bank’s total land area and are linked by ‘Israeli-only’ roads. Israel recently announced its intention to acquire even more land in Area C, a move condemned by the UN Secretary General as it would see Israel expand its rule in the illegally occupied area, as well as fuel further Palestinian dispossession.
Christian Aid has continued to stand with our local partners and the people they serve, but the Palestinian people have long been failed by the international community, especially over the last two and half years. Repeated statements by the Irish government, the EU and the UN that Israeli settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace ultimately ring hollow when we continue to trade with them and provide vital economic support.
How can you tell a Palestinian family that you oppose the theft of their farm, when the stolen dates and olives are shipped and sold on supermarket shelves across the country?
Palestinians need other countries to end this hypocrisy. It’s time to stand up and take real, concrete action that signals to Israel that the era of impunity is over and the time for accountability for its actions starts now. This includes Ireland.
The Occupied Territories Bill, first put forward by Senator Frances Black, has been on the table for eight long years. This relatively modest measure, which would see a ban on all trade with the illegal Israeli settlements continues to be obstructed and delayed time and time again by successive Irish governments.
The current government is pushing for a watered-down version of the original Bill which would limit its application to physical goods, exempting valuable trade in services. This lets tech and IT firms complicit in the occupation off the hook and fails to meet the standard set by the International Court of Justice, which held that all countries are required to end all trade with the illegal Israeli settlements.
The draft Bill also goes against the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee’s own recommendations for goods and services to be covered, as well as legal opinion from two of the world's leading experts on EU trade law which concluded that a ban on trade in both goods and services is both legal and doable.
The Occupied Territories Bill falls within the brief of Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee – and my message to her is clear. The West Bank is disappearing before our eyes and this government have the tools to do something about it, all that is needed is the political will to do it.
Katie Roxburgh is Christian Aid’s Programme Manager for Israel & the Occupied Palestinian Territory. To find out more about the campaign to pass the occupied territories bill and how you can support, visit: https://www.passtheotb.ie
