The West Bank crisis and sanctions

Pressure on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continued to intensify through September 2026 alongside the Gaza war. Israeli forces killed a Palestinian near Jenin on 20 September, and Israeli settlers have since been reported killing another Palestinian in a separate incident. Earlier in the month Israel arrested around 100 Palestinians in a single week, and Al Jazeera reported that the network of Israeli checkpoints across the territory was choking the Palestinian economy by making ordinary movement between towns unpredictable. Rights organisations framed the pattern as systematic rather than incidental, and an NGO warned in mid-September that Israel was working to eliminate the Palestinian presence from the West Bank, while Al Jazeera reported on the use of artificial intelligence to identify structures for demolition. Settlers have also attacked a West Bank village, blocking a Palestinian family from returning home, and a separate settler raid that injured Israeli forces drew a rare rebuke from the Israeli government itself. The international response remained contested, with Norway facing domestic criticism over a proposed ban on West Bank trade and the UK maintaining its existing ban on goods from Israeli settlements.