Gaza: the record ·
The West Bank: an occupation the world court ruled unlawful
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end. Since then, killings, settler attacks and expulsions in the West Bank have only grown.
The ruling
On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful. It said Israel must end it "as rapidly as possible", immediately stop all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers, and make reparation, and that all states must not recognize the occupation as lawful. In September 2024 the UN General Assembly demanded that Israel end the occupation within 12 months.
The killing
According to UN OCHA, 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, were killed in the West Bank from 2023 through 2025. Oxfam found that more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in that period than in the previous 17 years.
Settlers and expulsions
In early 2026, OCHA recorded an average of 6.6 settler attacks a day causing casualties or property damage, the highest rate it has registered, and more Palestinians were displaced by attacks, demolitions and evictions in the first four months of 2026 than in all of 2025.
No Other Land
The directors of NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, documented these expulsions in Masafer Yatta in their Oscar-winning film No Other Land.
Watch NAZA
NAZA is Israeli military slang for collateral damage: the number of civilians an officer is allowed to kill in a strike. In this documentary, 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, many from the army's most prestigious units, explain how that number was set, approved and exceeded in Gaza. What they describe is not a tragic accident of war but a system: targets tracked to their family homes, families watched for days, strikes approved knowing children were inside.
In cinemas now, and free worldwide on theguardian.com after the cinema run.
