Israeli settlers have pitched tents in the Wadi Zeytun area near the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, in an attempt to establish a new illegal outpost, while a separate outpost was being established the same day in the neighbouring village of Burqa. If both outposts take hold, the number surrounding these two villages will rise to six. Settlers have already seized roughly 4,700 of Umm Safa's 4,800 dunams of land — and around 10,000 of Burqa's 12,000 dunams — dramatically shrinking the agricultural land available to their Palestinian residents.

Simultaneously, a settler siege on three Palestinian families in the village of Qusra, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, entered its second week. Fifteen people, including two children, remain confined to their homes in the Ras al-Ain area. Israeli soldiers have erected a military tent near the besieged homes and have been using a nearby house as a military base, with the mayor of Qusra saying the army's presence has itself become a source of harassment, disrupting sleep and daily life. A UN team was able to reach the families on Sunday to deliver water and food supplies. Municipal crews also managed to restore electricity and water lines that had been cut.

Sunday saw a broader wave of incidents across the West Bank. Settlers attacked a Palestinian home in Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, detaining those inside; Israeli forces then arrested nine residents and blocked Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances from reaching the area, confiscating keys to medical vehicles. Attacks were also reported in the Nab'a al-Kaabneh community near Taybeh and in Hebron's al-Jaabari neighbourhood, where Palestinians were injured, some by gunfire. Israeli forces also raided several villages, delivering demolition and construction-stop orders to Palestinian homeowners and firing tear gas at residential areas.

Nadav Weiman, director of Breaking the Silence — an Israeli NGO composed of former soldiers who oppose the occupation — described a now-familiar pattern in which soldiers sent to restrain settlers instead stand by, or worse. "Soldiers were sent to stop the settlers, and instead they were seen praying together," he said. He argued that settler violence is a deliberate strategy: "They want more blood to get more land. They say confrontation with Palestinians will bring violence, which will allow them to extend their control until annexation."

The scale of the expansion is stark: Palestinian authorities say settlers have established some 200 new outposts across the West Bank in the roughly 1,000 days since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023. Around 750,000 settlers now live in 156 settlements and 360 outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, all considered illegal under international law. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said the situation represents a "climax" of decades of impunity. "Israel has outsourced coercion to the settlers and is using them to advance ethnic cleansing," she said. The UN has documented more than 1,430 settler attacks targeting around 260 Palestinian communities since the start of 2026, with settler violence and demolitions having displaced approximately 3,800 Palestinians — nearly half of them children.