Peace and Justice Post

Human Rights Watch calls for sanctions and the suspension of military aid to Israel, as dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure.

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By Al Jazeera Staff

Published On 20 Aug 202620 Aug 2026

Dozens of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at risk of erasure due to escalating attacks by Israeli settlers, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

Increased settler attacks, along with the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements illegal under international law, are driving a wave of forced displacement of Palestinians, the US-based rights group said in a report released on Thursday.

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The report accuses Israeli authorities of arming, funding and granting impunity to settlers to carry out the attacks.

Israeli settler violence has been growing since the current government took office in December 2022.

But attacks spiked in the first two months of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, with killings including those of children, assaults, sexual violence, physical and mental abuse, arbitrary detention, arson, property demolition and theft among the reported abuses, the report adds.

Maximum land and minimum Palestinians

“The Israeli government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it,” Sarah Sanbar, the acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

“Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it,” she added.

HRW investigated settler attacks in seven Palestinian West Bank communities in April and May, including Al-Mughayyir, Mikhmas and Taybeh, in Ramallah governorate; Jalud and Qaryut, in Nablus governorate; and Khirbet Hamsa and Muarrajat East, in the Jordan Valley.

The report found that, sometimes, armed settlers acted alongside Israeli military units or with soldiers standing by yet failing to intervene, during raids on Palestinian residents and property, contributing to a pattern of forced displacement.

Rising forced displacement

It said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) research found more Palestinians were forcibly displaced by settler attacks, demolitions and evictions in the first four months of this year than in the whole of 2025.

OCHA found that 107 communities, comprising 5,900 Palestinians, had been completely or partially displaced as a result of settler violence since January 2023. It also found that the Israeli military expelled another 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank since January 2025, essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.

Human Rights Watch says the attacks and lack of state protection have created a coercive environment that leaves many Palestinians saying they have no choice but to leave their homes.

Targeted sanctions

The report recommended targeted sanctions on those implicated in ongoing abuses, the suspension of weapons transfers to Israel and a trade ban with illegal settlements, and urged countries to consider suspending preferential trade agreements with Israel.

“The impunity Israeli authorities accord settlers stems directly from the free pass Israel’s allies and donors have granted it,” Sanbar said.

“Israel and the governments that give it a blank check share responsibility and should be held to account,” she said.

Israel is increasingly worried about collapsing public support in the US following its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

News Desk, The Cradle, AUG 17, 2026

(Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson page Facebook)

Israel has created a fictitious think tank as part of a digital influence campaign designed to feed pro-Israel narratives into artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, Responsible Statecraft (RS) reported on 17 August.

US public relations firm Piro, Inc. received $900,000 from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency to create the Hanover Institute, which uses AI to write reports painting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and colonization of the West Bank in a positive light.

Since 6 August, the Hanover Institute has issued over 100 reports, which are deliberately crafted to influence AI chatbots to use its content when drafting answers for users.

“At first glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine … But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank,” RS wrote.

Hanover issues think-tank-style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”

However, the reports do not list any authors and include a small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage that notes the institute was created on behalf of the Israeli government.

The reports include footnotes and are written in a neutral tone, making them attractive as content used by AI chatbots such as Claude or Gemini, a practice known as “LLM poisoning.”

Piro’s website openly states that it creates “content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” a method it describes as “AI Story Optimization.”

Many of the reports have titles that mimic neutral questions that chatbot users might ask about Israel and Palestine, such as “What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?” or “What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”

The articles then use Israeli sources to present a pro-Israel perspective in answering the question.

An article entitled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” cites a 2022 poll that found that 47 percent of Israeli Jews believed that statement.

Another report tries to refute the findings of a UNICEF report stating that 90 percent of water and other infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed in Gaza.

Many reports link to articles claiming that anti-Semitism is on the rise, a tactic meant to deflect from Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

RS used GPTZero software to analyze 12 Hanover Institute articles and determine if the were written by a human author or by AI. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with “high confidence.” It flagged the final article as AI-written with “moderate confidence.”

Piro co-founder Daniel Rosenberg boasted on LinkedIn about his firm’s ability to influence chatbots: 

“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we spent months reverse-engineering it … At Piro, we already knew how to build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure AI knows how to tell them?”

Public opinion in the US has grown increasingly negative toward Israel, which relies on US military aid to wage its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing campaign in south Lebanon.

According to a recent Pew Research Poll, 60 percent of people in the US have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up nearly 20 points since 2022.

Israeli forces have killed at least 73,000 Palestinians since the genocide began in 2023, with some estimates suggesting over 200,000 Palestinians have been killed.

The Israeli minister also said he believes ‘all of Gaza’ belongs to Israel

by Dave DeCamp,Antiwar. com, August 16, 2026

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has called for Israel to kill 30 to 40 Palestinians every night in Gaza and said there are people in the Strip “who are not worthy of life.”

Ben Gvir made the comments when discussing the reduction in Israeli attacks in Gaza, though the IDF hasn’t fully stopped its strikes and continues to violate the US-backed October 2025 ceasefire deal.

“It’s no secret, I disagree with the prime minister,” Ben Gvir said on a podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, who was previously held captive in Gaza, according to The Associated Press.

“I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat — there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people,” he added.

Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, is known as an outspoken proponent of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory, views that he reaffirmed in the podcast interview.

“I see all of Gaza as ours,” he said. “Settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries, and for the terrorists, no emigration, nothing, just to kill them one by one.”

While often portrayed as a fringe figure, Ben Gvir has significant influence in the government and holds a powerful position, as he oversees police and prisons, where nearly 100 Palestinians have died since October 7, 2026, due to increasingly worse conditions, which Ben Gvir has boasted about implementing. He is now pushing a plan to create crocodile-filled moats around Israeli prisons.

Displaced Palestinians, including many children, wait in long queues to receive hot meals distributed by a charitable organization in Gaza City, Gaza on June 7, 2026.

(Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Aug 13, 2026

The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that the Israeli government is still restricting the entry of engine oil and generator parts to the Gaza Strip, imperiling life-saving hospital functions and other essential services in the decimated territory.

Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), noted that Gaza’s remaining healthcare system relies “almost entirely” on generators, “with most electricity cut by Israeli authorities and much of the electrical infrastructure destroyed.” The group said that in some Gaza facilities, its teams barely have sufficient engine oil to last a month and have been forced to “buy engine oil at the local market at exorbitant prices.”

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Filipe Ribeiro, MSF’s head of mission in Palestine, said that “what we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design.”

“For more than two years, we have observed Israel’s policies restricting the entry of supplies,” said Ribeiro. “These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive.”

Israel’s continued restriction of supplies comes as the country’s military, which is armed by the United States, keeps up its deadly bombing of the strip despite a purported ceasefire deal that took effect in October 2025. Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed plan for Hamas disarmament in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Earlier this week, a group of United Nations experts condemned Israel’s recent “strikes on hospitals and shelters, the killing of police officers and UN-contracted staff, attacks on fishers, and abductions and abuses by armed groups reportedly collaborating with the Israeli military, as well as the killing of humanitarian workers, who through their work protecting and promoting fundamental human rights, are human rights defenders.”

“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment.”

According to MSF, Israel’s sustained attacks and obstruction of supplies “extend far beyond hospitals.”

“Without engine oil, all transport services could stop, including much-needed water trucks during the peak of summer heat, ambulances, buses transporting medical staff to work, and trucks delivering humanitarian supplies,” the group said. “Bakeries and flour mills also rely on generators, meaning food production could also be affected.”

MSF characterized Israel’s continued obstruction of engine oil and spare generator parts as “one piece of a larger pattern of structural violence imposed by Israeli authorities to intentionally restrict access to vital services and supplies as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

“These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment,” the group said. “The shortages now impact virtually every aspect of life in Gaza, leaving hospitals and humanitarian organizations without basic supplies.”

Ribeiro said in a statement that “the items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable, and dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods.”

“This is not bureaucracy,” he added. “It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible.”