Amid relentless unrest in the region and escalation at the weekend, details of a return visit by the Bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek, to the volatile Middle East have emerged in which the church leader met victims of settler violence.

As revealed in the Church Times, the Bishop used the backdrop of the trip to East Jerusalem in a bid to sustain concerns over ongoing violence which, she said, transcend the arguments of being "pro-Palestine" or "anti-Israel".

No stranger to tackling controversial issues, Gloucester's Bishop, who sits in the House of Lords, made her second visit to the West Bank earlier this month.

Bishop Treweek told the newspaper: "Every person should have liberty and equal dignity, and this is not what we're seeing in the occupied Palestinian territories. All the power sits with Israel, and the Palestinian people have no way to defend themselves."

As the world continues to watch the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, violence in the occupied West Bank is also increasing, the Rt Rev Rachel Treweek warned.

The Bishop's visit to the West Bank began on Friday May 23 and came in the wake of a statement from the House of Bishops which condemned the bombardment of Gaza as a "grave sin" and "war of aggression".

As the most forceful statement to date, Bishop Treweek said it had been appreciated by those whom she met during her five-day trip to east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

She told the Church Times: "There was a feeling that some of the statements we'd issued at the beginning didn't say very much at all, and they felt really let down by those."

Given the experience of the return trip, she said she was now "even more resolved to be speaking both into the Church and speaking into Parliament. I want to be encouraging Christians to be speaking loudly about sanctions, about stopping the sale of arms."

Despite the Bishop's campaign work, the Israeli government subsequently announced the creation of 22 new settlements, which are illegal under international law.

Isreal's Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is leader of the National Religious Party-Religious Zionism party, said the confirmation was a "strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel".

Along with other church leaders, Bishop Treweek is campaigning for recognition of Palestinian statehood. Ongoing events in the West Bank, as well as in Gaza, she said, are "about dispossession of land and identities, a violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, to be recognised as a state."

During the latest trip, said she had witnessed the outcome of settler violence first-hand while visiting a family who had been attacked by settlers: "The father had just had his leg amputated after he'd been shot in the leg by settlers, and we actually saw the footage, because his 16-year-old son had filmed the settler invasion of the land.

"When some Israeli soldiers arrived, the boy and his wounded father were both arrested. The father had passed out, and woke up the next day in an Israeli hospital, his wounded leg amputated, and his remaining limbs tied to the bed," she said.

Given the evidence of the video footage, charges against the man and his son were subsequently dropped, but other residents in the West Bank who have complained of attakcs on their land have been punished, while a Palestinian Christian family whose land near Bethlehem was seized by Israeli settlers at the end of July, became victims of an "abhorrent attack and dispossession," she added.

A meeting held with women who were engaged in an empowerment programme run by the YMCA was in equal parts depressing and heartening, the Bishop also stated.

"What was sad for me was they'd done all this really proactive, innovative stuff, improving electricity and water supplies and getting their children to school; but, in recent weeks, that's all moved to questions such as 'How do we get bars on our windows, and fire extinguishers?' because the settler activity has become so aggressive."

Palestinians living in the occupied territories, who include a small Christian minority, faced intense pressure to leave, due to settler activity, the use of checkpoints to restrict movement, and land rights being violated, she said.

No stranger to open criticism of Israel, in July last year Bishop Treweek made a bold statement on experiences gained from a previous visit to the region: "In the past I have been wary of using the word apartheid to describe the situation in Palestine-Israel, but having seen even more starkly how life is now in the occupied Palestinian territory, I wish to stand alongside other individuals and groups, not least Christians, in boldly naming apartheid," she said.