What is life really like in the West Bank?

In March of this year, the eyes of the world turned towards the occupied West Bank when the film ‘No Other Land’, which tells the story of Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in the region, won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

Two months later, The Settlers, a BBC documentary where broadcaster and journalist Louis Theroux meets the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied territories, went viral.

Driving around the West Bank, 14 years on from his first visit to the area, Theroux said “much was still the same” in the occupied zone. “The same sense of a two-tier society: Jewish settlers who lived protected under Israeli civil law; Palestinians who were subject to an opaque regime of military rule, with roads closed, life made difficult in ways big and small,” he wrote in a Guardian newspaper in May.

Yet, the situation in the West Bank is not what it was a few years ago. In January 2025, Israel launched its Iron Wall military operation which left tens of thousands of Palestinians without proper shelter or healthcare, while the expansion of Israeli settlements – which are illegal under international law – has rapidly increased since Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel in 2023.

In May, Israel announced that 22 new Jewish settlements had been approved in the occupied West Bank – the biggest expansion in decades.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban trade in goods with the occupied Palestinian territories, is continuing.

But even if it passes, what will this Irish legislation actually achieve?

Irish Times journalist Sally Hayden reports from the West Bank.

Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and Andrew McNair.

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