Occupied West Bank (QNN)- A masked Israeli settler was filmed abusing a tied-up dog owned by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Atara on Friday. Lucy, the dog, suffered severe injuries and was later taken for treatment.
The footage showed the settler repeatedly beating the animal on the head in the owner's yard.
Lucy, a dog the family of its owner had raised for around a year and a half, suffered severe injuries and was later taken for treatment.
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According to the owner who spoke to Haaretz and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, the dog was tied up for guarding. "She wasn't loose, she didn't attack him or bite him.”
"He attacked a tied-up dog."
The man added that he watched the incident from inside his home because, in several previous cases, he said, Israeli soldiers had instructed residents that if they wanted to document Israeli settler attacks, they should do so from their homes.
The owner said it was part of a broader pattern of repeated harassment of his family by settlers.
Police claimed they had opened an investigation and had contacted the owner to file a complaint.
The incident took place near an outpost established last summer on village land in Area B, where Palestinians say ongoing settler harassment and intimidation have forced families to leave homes adjacent to the outpost, even after a closed military zone order that had previously expelled the families had expired.
Describing Lucy's condition, Maryana Abodoly, founder of Petaxi, an animal transportation service operating in Israel and the West Bank, said the dog appeared critically injured.
"Lucy was in a very miserable condition. There was severe bleeding from her eyes and her head was literally crushed," she said. "She was almost unconscious. She couldn't stand or move at all."
Abodoly said she frequently receives reports of animals allegedly attacked by Israeli settlers, though many incidents are never documented.
"I constantly receive reports about animals being beaten by settlers," she said. "Not everything is documented, and even when it is documented, unfortunately not much always happens."
Separately Friday, local sources confirmed that settlers torched and vandalized several vehicles in the central West Bank Palestinian village of Shuqba.
Footage from the scene showed one of the targeted vehicles up in flames.
Also Friday, an armed Israeli settler was filmed standing over a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man in the outskirts of the central West Bank village of Bayt Iksa. Sources identified the man as a farmer who was trying to reach his land. A separate clip showed Israeli soldiers arriving at the scene after the bound man was dragged by the settler onto a nearby road.
And overnight, Palestinian sources confirmed that settlers set fire to a mosque and several vehicles in the village of Jibiya in the Ramallah area.
Graffiti was reportedly also sprayed on the mosque, including the phrase “For the liberation of Jerusalem”, apparently in reference to so-called Jerusalem Day.
Spike in Settler Violence and Forced Displacement
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder highlighted last week the growing displacement of Palestinians, with over 2,500 - including 1,100 children - having been forcibly expelled from their homes between January and April, surpassing the total recorded for all of 2025.
Water infrastructure, including sanitation and irrigation systems, has also repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces and settlers.
"This has serious implications for both the Palestinian economy and children’s health, hygiene, and dignity," Elder said.
On Wednesday, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli forces during a “coordinated” settler and military attack on the village of Jaljulia, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
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Israeli settlers and forces are carrying out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the occupied West Bank with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes and lands.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, over 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.
According to OCHA, between 7 October 2023 and 22 April 2026, 1,081 Palestinians – at least 235 of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Thirty-five of them have been killed since the beginning of 2026.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official agency, said Israeli forces and settlers carried out a total of 1,819 attacks in March alone, including 1,322 by the Israeli forces and 497 by settlers.
Violence and harassment by Israeli settlers continued unabated across the occupied West Bank, OCHA added. The attacks have risen dramatically since the start of the genocide in Gaza.
Settler violence has also become a key driver of forced displacement in the occupied West Bank.
The attacks come as Israel’s security cabinet ratified a series of decisions pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz, enabling Israel to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”. Amnesty International said the expansion of illegal settlements and state-backed settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory were “a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action”.
In a report issued in March by the UN, the number of Palestinians forcibly driven from their homes by Israel in the occupied West Bank surged 25 percent between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.
Over that period, more than 36,000 Palestinians were displaced. The report recorded 1,732 incidents of settler violence that caused casualties or property destruction, up from 1,400 in the previous reporting period - an increase of nearly 25 percent.
The attacks included sustained harassment, intimidation and the destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods.
“Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct,” the report said, making it difficult to distinguish between state and settler violence.
Longstanding and pervasive impunity is “facilitating and encouraging violence against and harassment of Palestinians”, it added.
Israeli soldiers and settlers are also using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts said this week.
Palestinian women, men and children have reported attacks, forced nudity, invasive and painful body cavity searches, Israelis exposing their genitals, including to minors, and threats of sexual violence.
“Sexualized violence is used to pressure communities, shape decisions about remaining or leaving their homes and land, and alter patterns of daily life,” the group of international humanitarian organisations said in a report.
“To force Palestinians out, settlers resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, “with the backing of the Israeli government and military”, Peace Now said.
“No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this,” said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinian communities against displacement.
Recently, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned in a report that Israeli policies in the West Bank – including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes – aim to uproot Palestinian villages and areas.
“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.
It added that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.
Human rights groups say the Israeli occupation has allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.
Israeli organization B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”.
The UN also warned last year that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.
