Israeli violence drives rising displacement in the West Bank

According to figures from the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA, Israeli settler violence and harassment in the occupied West Bank displaced almost 700 Palestinians in January, as reported by the Arab Weekly plus agencies on February 6th.

Due to the displacement of an entire herding community in the Jordan Valley, January’s figures were particularly high. As stated by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), since October 2023, settler violence has become a key driver of forced displacement in the West Bank. Over the past three years, both the violence from Israeli settlers and military operations carried out by the Israeli army have displaced more than 40,000 people. Oxfam reported that this is “the highest number since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.”

To force Palestinians out, settlers resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, “with the backing of the Israeli government and military,” according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now. However, settler violence has only increased in recent years, including during the last olive harvest season between October and November.

In October alone, more than 2,000 attacks by settlers and the Israeli armed forces against Palestinian communities were recorded. In November, settler rampages also resulted in several Palestinian homes and a mosque being set on fire. Since October 2023, over 19,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been detained by Israeli forces.

Settler attacks have also intensified following Israel’s declared and approved plan to build 11 new settlements, considered illegal under international law. The settlement expansion is part of the so-called E1 plan, through which Tel Aviv purportedly aims to annex 82 percent of the West Bank. The plan would see the construction of more than 3,400 settler units. Across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, over 700,000 Israelis reside in roughly 160 settlements, with more than 500,000 settlers living in the West Bank among three million Palestinians.

“No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this,” said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinians against displacement. “All eyes are focused on Gaza when it comes to Palestine, while we have an ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and nobody’s paying attention to the West Bank,” she also said.

Arab Weekly plus agencies, Maghrebi.org