Abbas urges world to stop Israeli West Bank escalation as 57 killed

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on world leaders Sunday to stop Israeli military operations and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, as a wave of violence that killed at least 57 Palestinians in a week threatens to extinguish prospects for a two-state solution.

"The situation has gone beyond isolated incidents of violence," Abbas wrote in letters to leaders including the EU, the Arab League and the UN Security Council, describing "a systematic Israeli policy aimed at creating new realities on the ground through settlement expansion," according to the official WAFA news agency.

The escalation coincides with Israel's security cabinet approving 1.3 billion shekels ($426.3 million) to establish 34 new illegal settlements and an additional 1.075 billion shekels ($352.5 million) for settler road infrastructure, Wafa reported. Israeli forces have sealed entire Palestinian towns behind military gates, destroyed water infrastructure serving 4,500 dunams of farmland and settlers have burned mosques and homes with near-total impunity, according to local officials and activists.

The violence risks eliminating any remaining path to a two-state solution, with Abbas warning that Israeli policies are "deliberately jeopardising" prospects for peace and threatening regional stability. The last comparable diplomatic moment — Biden's July 2022 visit to Bethlehem — saw the then-US president reaffirm support for a Palestinian state along 1967 lines, a commitment that has since been undermined by the fastest settlement expansion in decades.

A Week of Mass Casualties

Israeli air attacks in Gaza killed at least 57 people between July 13 and July 20, including six children and eight women, the UN human rights office said, warning the pattern "raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law." Strikes hit a funeral procession in the Nuseirat refugee camp, residential buildings in Gaza City and tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, according to medical officials and Wafa.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces sealed the western entrance to Bethlehem's countryside with a new iron gate, cutting off four villages, and reinforced closures at checkpoints that serve as lifelines for Ramallah residents. Settlers under army protection attacked the town of Sinjil, burning crops after residents repelled an initial assault, local activist Ayed Jafry said. In at-Tawani, settlers burned the village mosque, two homes and a dairy factory on July 18 and 19, according to local activists.

Settlement Expansion Accelerates

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the cabinet's approval of 34 new settlements a "settlement and security revolution," aiming to establish more than 100 settlements and 160 agricultural outposts, according to Wafa. The infrastructure drive has reshaped the geography of violence: in al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, 17-year-old national youth football player Fadi al-Naasan died July 18 of wounds from a settler-and-army raid — the seventh resident killed since October 2023, including four minors.

The humanitarian toll is compounding. In Gaza, 63 percent of households now access less than six liters of drinking water a day, while 60 percent live within 10 meters of exposed sewage, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Livestock feed imports have been blocked for more than a month, tripling barley prices and threatening a die-off that would reverse the modest herd recovery recorded between October 2025 and May 2026, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization confirmed.

Abbas called on the international community to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which affirms the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, and to provide international protection for the Palestinian people. He reaffirmed the Palestinian Authority's commitment to a two-state solution based on international legitimacy and the rejection of violence.

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