Casualty Statistics Driving a False ‘Settler Violence’ Narrative in the West Bank

Nearly every day, newspapers globally report on the number of Palestinians reportedly killed in the West Bank by the IDF or by Israelis living in the West Bank. Taking the numbers from the UN, outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC Australia, and the BBC have all referenced Palestinians killed by both “Israeli forces and settlers.”

While the IDF is known to take precautions during its operations in the West Bank to minimize harm to civilians, many of those killed are not ordinary Palestinian civilians at all, but rather terrorists with affiliations to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or lone actors committing attacks against Israelis and the IDF.

However, the media are not reporting on these incidents accurately, with outlets consistently crafting stories in which it is suggested that Palestinian civilians are being routinely attacked and murdered by Israelis living in the West Bank.

Casualties Reported

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank from October 7, 2023, until December 2025.

B’Tselem, a fringe Israeli “human rights group,” that has previously accused Israel of committing genocide, has also kept data of the Palestinians killed in the West Bank, including the name, location, date of death, and type of injury.

From October 7, 2023, through October 31, 2025 — the latest date of available data — B’Tselem lists 963 Palestinian deaths by Israeli forces in the West Bank and Israel. Just under 50 percent of those killed are recorded as having known terror-group affiliations, not including lone-wolf attackers who attempted or carried out assaults on Israeli civilians or security forces.

Visualization based on B’Tselem data of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2025.

In the same period, B’Tselem recorded an additional 24 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians and 13 killed by unidentified parties. These figures include individuals affiliated with terror organizations such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, as well as unaffiliated attackers who carried out terror assaults. In total, B’Tselem reported approximately 1,000 deaths over the two-year period.

The OCHA lists 1,020 Palestinian casualties in the West Bank and Israel for the same period (October 7, 2023, until October 31, 2025). This includes 23 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians or off-duty soldiers. It does not provide the name and type of injury for each individual. The casualties in this list include Palestinians who died in direct “confrontations” with Israelis, meaning it also includes terrorists that were killed during or after committing a terror attack.

When comparing OCHA and B’Tselem’s data, several patterns emerge. While the datasets differ somewhat in methodology, categorization, and total counts, their overall trends remain consistent.

Data by District

Graph based on B’Tselem data of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces from October 7, 2023, to October 31, 2025.

Notably, B’Tselem’s data indicates a correlation between districts with the highest number of fatalities and a high concentration of terrorist activity and affiliations.

The areas most frequently referred to in newspapers as being the “deadliest” are often the same areas where terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad maintain a strong operational presence. This is especially true for Jenin, which both B’Tselem and the OCHA cite as having the highest rates of Palestinian deaths. Other cities with high death rates include Tulkarm, Nablus, and Tubas, all of which the IDF has operated in to thwart terrorism threats.

B’Tselem’s own data show that more than half of the deaths in Jenin since October 7, 2023, have been those with affiliations to terrorist organizations. Yet, the media has continued to memorialize the city for being the “martyrs’ capital.”

Reminder to @WSJ: Jenin wasn’t a “center of militant resistance”—it IS a terror hub that fuels suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Its terrorists have recently murdered Israelis in Tel Aviv, Elad, and Jerusalem.

Get it right. pic.twitter.com/Kz3PmHdMhb

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 4, 2025

Casualty figures divorced from the security reality of these cities risk misleading readers by implying indiscriminate violence against Palestinian civilians — often portrayed as occurring at the hands of Israeli civilians — rather than the reality of Israeli counterterror operations targeting organized terror networks in the West Bank.

Terrorists Killed by Israelis

Although the OCHA data does not break down each person by name and background, cross-referencing its own data shows that terrorists are included in the data on casualty figures.

A terror shooting attack in a gas station in the Jewish community of Eli in the West Bank on February 29, 2024, left two Israelis murdered. An off-duty, reservist soldier neutralized the terrorist. This data also appears on the OCHA data on casualties list, where the Israeli who neutralized the terrorist is listed as an “Israeli civilian settler.” Because the Israeli was an off-duty soldier, B’Tselem included the Palestinian terrorist in the list of those killed by Israeli forces.

Data from the OCHA “Data on casualties” database displaying a Palestinian casualty on February 29, 2024.

In B’Tselem’s list of Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians are individuals who carried out terrorist attacks, such as Hareth Khaled ‘Abdallah Jbarah, who, on November 6, 2024, drove his car into a bus stop near the Jewish community of Shilo in the West Bank. He then exited his car with a knife, attempting to stab Israelis, before an Israeli civilian fatally shot him. He is also counted as a Palestinian casualty from that day on the OCHA website, with the person who stopped his attack described as an “Israeli civilian settler.”

More recently, in the Humanitarian Situation Update #343, OCHA noted that “two Palestinians attempted to run over a crowd of Israelis” in the Gush Etzion area on November 18, 2025, before “Israeli forces opened fire and killed both Palestinian men.” This data also appears in OCHA’s casualty data.

This reveals a consistent pattern in which Palestinians killed while actively carrying out a terrorist attack are recorded as “Palestinian casualties.” At the same time, Israelis who neutralize them are framed as the perpetrators of violence.

Data from the OCHA “Data on casualties” database displaying Israeli casualties from October 7, 2023-October 31, 2025.

Interestingly enough, the OCHA data on Israeli fatalities differentiates between a “settler” and an “Israeli civilian,” implying there is a difference between the two — a distinction that is not applied when reporting Palestinian fatalities.

This all points to a larger problem in West Bank reporting. UN casualty data becomes misleading when it groups terrorists together with civilians tragically caught in the crossfire — and the media’s uncritical use of these figures (without distinction, verification, or context), further amplifies a distorted picture of events on the ground.

By citing aggregate casualty figures while omitting how, where, and why deaths occurred, media outlets flatten complex counterterror operations into simplistic narratives of one-sided violence. The result is coverage that obscures responsibility, erases the role of terror organizations, and leaves audiences with a fundamentally false understanding of what is happening in the West Bank.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.