More than 36,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in a year due to Israeli settler and army violence, the UN rights office said.
In a year Israel has forcibly displaced more than 36,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, the United Nations has warned that illegal Israeli settlement expansion and land acquisition efforts are accelerating.
A report on Tuesday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found 1,732 incidents of Israeli settler violence that resulted in casualties or property damage from November 2024 to the end of October last year.
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That’s a 24-percent increase from the 1,400 incidents reported during the same period a year ago.
“Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic, and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing a central role in directing, participating in, or enabling this behavior,” the report found.
Settler attacks, combined with Israeli forced relocation orders, home demolitions and military violence, have forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes across the West Bank, UN rights chiefs said.
This includes approximately 32,000 Palestinians who were forcibly evicted from the Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams and Far’a refugee camps in the north of the territory during the Israeli military operation.
“The displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank represents a mass expulsion of Palestinians on an unprecedented scale, an illegal transfer prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the report said.
“The displacement in the occupied West Bank coincides with the widespread displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, indicating a concerted Israeli policy of mass forcible transfers across the occupied territory aimed at raising concerns of ethnic cleansing aimed at permanent displacement at the hands of the Israeli military.”
Palestinians in the West Bank have faced a sharp escalation in Israeli military and settler attacks in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza that began in October 2023.
According to the latest UN figures, attacks are being reported daily across the West Bank, with at least 1,071 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
In the latest deadly incident, Israeli forces killed four members of a Palestinian family, including two children, on Sunday.
Ali Khaled Bani Ouda, Waed Bani Ouda and their two children – Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5 – were killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire on their car in the village of Tammun near Tubas in the northern West Bank.
“This horrific incident is the latest in a pattern of escalating lethal force by Israeli forces against Palestinians and tragically we are seeing families and children pay the price,” Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa director Heba Morayef said on Monday.
“We are deeply concerned that initial information and evidence indicate that the attack may have resulted in an extrajudicial execution,” Moreyeff said.
The Israeli government has come under international condemnation after approving plans to expand its authority over much of the West Bank – a move experts have condemned as a de facto annexation and a violation of international law.
The UN has previously warned that Israel’s annexation push “will undoubtedly accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and their forced displacement and lead to the creation of more illegal Israeli settlements.”
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