UN officials: Occupied West Bank at 'breaking point'

UN officials said Tuesday that the occupied West Bank has reached a critical "breaking point," citing a record surge in violence by Israeli occupiers and a systematic unraveling of Palestinian statehood.

“Humanitarian organizations cannot create the political conditions that children need to be safe,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hannan Sulieman told the Security Council. "That responsibility rests with member states who have the power to change them.”

She presented four urgent requests to the international community: prioritizing the protection of children by ending administrative detention, halting forced displacements through diplomatic pressure, ensuring safe access to schools and hospitals, and allowing vital humanitarian supplies to move without delay.

Sulieman reported a harrowing toll on minors, noting that 174 Palestinian children have been verified killed in the occupied West Bank since January 2024. “That is more than one child every week,” she noted.

She revealed that at least 355 Palestinian children are being held in military detention, the highest in eight years, with nearly half detained without charge or trial.

Systematic displacement

Deputy Special Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov echoed the alarm, describing the situation as an emergency requiring immediate action to prevent de facto annexation. He said that in 2026, dozens of Palestinians have been killed and approximately 3,800 displaced due to demolitions, evictions and attacks by occupiers.

“Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels,” Alakbarov emphasized, citing more than 1,400 documented incidents this year affecting 260 communities. He warned of a clear pattern where Palestinian populations are forcibly removed from their villages before occupiers seize the vacated land. The official noted that for the first time, land was explicitly seized in "Area A" to build infrastructure for occupiers.

Fiscal, political instability

Alakbarov also highlighted the acute fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority (PA), which reportedly lacks $6 billion in clearance revenues withheld by Israeli authorities. Amid the turmoil, he welcomed preparations for legislative elections scheduled for Nov. 28.

Alakbarov concluded that they are "interconnected steps, not isolated developments," aimed at weakening Palestinian governance.

He said if the situation continues to unravel, it will undermine implementation of resolution 2803 (2025) and erode the prospects for realizing a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace based on the two-state solution, urging an immediate “and in full" implementation of resolution 2803, together with the New York Declaration.

Resolution 2803 endorses a peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump for the Gaza Strip and a temporary international force in the enclave following two years of war.

Since the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have escalated attacks in the West Bank, killing more than 1,183 Palestinians, injuring 13,000 and arresting nearly 25,000, according to Palestinian figures.

Palestinians warn that the escalation is part of Israeli efforts to impose facts on the ground, paving the way for annexation of the occupied West Bank and undermining the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders under relevant UN resolutions.