Palestinian Property is being Violated, and 23 Children Were Assaulted in One Week in the West Bank
Ramallah, May 19, 2026
The OIC Media Observatory on Israeli Crimes Against Palestinians documented numerous crimes committed between May 12 and 18, 2026, marked by a dangerous escalation of violations against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other places of worship in the Occupied A-Quds (Jerusalem) and the West Bank. The Israeli occupation authorities approved a plan to seize approximately twenty historic Palestinian properties in the Bab al-Silsila neighborhood adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem). These properties, owned by Jerusalemite families, include buildings and Islamic endowments dating back to the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. Furthermore, the extremist Israeli Minister of Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, continued his periodic incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, leading extremist settlers under the protection of the occupation police. He performed provocative dances and raised the Israeli flag. The occupation forces altered historical features in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by changing the window of the historic muezzin’s room and replacing it with an aluminum window, in disregard of the Islamic endowments. They stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque and expelled worshippers and mosque employees from the Isaac Hall in the mosque, and closed it on May 17, 2026, to worshippers in order to give settlers the opportunity to celebrate their religious holidays. They assaulted worshippers in the Beit Sheikh Mosque in the town of Beit Furik in Nablus, while settlers burned a mosque in the village of Jibya in Ramallah.
The number of raids carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in cities and villages of the West Bank reached 299, during which 120 Palestinians were arrested, including 15 children. The Israeli occupation forces also killed one child and wounded two others, while settlers assaulted five children. The Israeli occupation forces raided the boys’ secondary school in the town of Silat al-Dhahr, removing the Palestinian flag from its roof, and forced the principal of the secondary school in the village of Burqa, near Nablus, to evacuate the students. They also raided the training institute belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) during their incursion into Qalandiya refugee camp. Israeli occupation forces demolished 4 houses, 41 unidentified commercial establishments, two car washes, a room and walls of a house, and a barn. They confiscated land belonging to the city of Al-Bireh near the settlement of “Beit El”, and 61,652 square meters of land belonging to the town of Ya’bad, in addition to a mobile kitchen, two agricultural tractors, and a truck. They occupied a house and turned it into a military barracks, and forced another Palestinian to evacuate his house. They also forced shop owners in the Old City of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) to close their shops to make way for the settlers’ celebrations in the “Flag March,” and burned a vehicle.
Israeli occupation forces bulldozed 90,000 square meters of land in the village of Shuweika, near Tulkarm, in addition to land in three other areas. They uprooted trees from an area of 2,500 square meters in the Hasameen area and the village of Habla, near Qalqilya.
In one week, settlers carried out 119 attacks, including releasing livestock into grazing, agricultural, and residential areas on 15 occasions across four governorates. Settlers also displaced a Bedouin family west of the town of Al-Auja, near Jericho, and continued their attacks on Bedouin families in the Arab al-Kaabneh and Wadi Abu al-Hayat communities, also near Jericho.
Settlers stole a bulldozer, two tractors, 320 sheep, three donkeys, three horses, a mare, and crops. A bee farm in the village of Birzeit, near Ramallah, was robbed twice. Settlers cut tree branches in four different areas in Jenin and Salfit. They burned a vehicle repair shop, five vehicles, a sheep pen, and agricultural land in seven different areas in Nablus and Ramallah. They bulldozed other agricultural land in the Al-Hadidiya area of Tubas. They damaged the tires of one vehicle, the windows of four vehicles, and the contents of an agricultural storage room, a sheep pen, and mobile phones.
Regarding settlement activity, 14 incidents were recorded over seven days. These included the Israeli occupation forces issuing an order to extend a water pipeline serving settlements, confiscating land in four villages in Qalqilya and Salfit, and seizing 22,803 dunams of land belonging to the village of Haddad, near the ruins of the settlements of Ganim and Kadim in Jenin. The Israeli occupation forces also bulldozed agricultural land and uprooted ancient olive trees along a stretch of land adjacent to the Ma’ale Shomron settlement in the Al-Mahjar area, east of the town of Azzun. Furthermore, the occupation authorities carried out construction work on the roof of the historic Hebron Municipality building, which is closed by military order. This building is considered a significant historical landmark in the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Settlers also began establishing five new settlement outposts between the town of Deir Dibwan and the village of Rammun, in the village of Sikka in Hebron, in the Jabal al-Qarnarea of Hebron, between the villages of Qaryut and Jalud, and near the village of Burqa. They bulldozed land to expand settlement roads between Salfit and the town of Bruqin, and paved a settlement road to connect a new settlement outpost in the town of Sa’ir in Hebron. Meanwhile, occupation forces began paving a settlement road near the town of al-Dhahiriya in Hebron. Settlers seized caves inhabited by Palestinians north of the town of Dura in the Hebron governorate, which is witnessing unprecedented settlement activity, and erected a fence around land near the village of Duma in Nablus in an attempt to seize it.
The OIC Observatory recorded 35 Palestinians murdered and 176 injured during the reporting period, out of 1,065 incidents in a single week. In the Gaza Strip, 24 Palestinians were killed, and 150 were injured, and five bodies were recovered, in addition to six killed and 25 injured in the West Bank. This brings the total number of those killed and injured since October 7, 2023, to 73,934 killed and 183,415 injured, respectively.