Israel carrying out ‘mass expulsion of Palestinians’ in West Bank, UN warns 

Israel has forcibly displaced more than 36,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in one year, the United Nations says, warning that illegal Israeli settlement expansion and a push to annex the territory are accelerating.

Tuesday’s report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented 1,732 incidents of Israeli settler violence causing casualties or property damage from November 2024 to the end of October last year.

That amounts to a 24-percent increase from the 1,400 incidents reported over the same period a year earlier.

“Settler violence continued in a coordinated, strategic and largely unchallenged manner, with Israeli authorities playing the central role in directing, participating in or enabling this conduct,” the report found.

The settler attacks, combined with Israeli forced displacement orders, home demolitions and military violence, have pushed tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes across the West Bank, the UN rights chief also said.

That includes about 32,000 Palestinians who were forced out of the Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams and Far’a refugee camps in the north of the territory during an Israeli army operation.

“The displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank represented the mass expulsion of Palestinians on a scale previously unseen, amounting to unlawful transfer that is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the report said.

“The displacement in the occupied West Bank, which coincides with the extensive displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, at the hands of the Israeli military appears to indicate a concerted Israeli policy of mass forcible transfer throughout the occupied territory, aimed at permanent displacement, raising concerns of ethnic cleansing.”

Palestinians in the West Bank have faced an intensified surge in Israeli military and settler attacks in the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, which began in October 2023.

Attacks have been reported daily across the West Bank, with at least 1,071 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there since the start of the Gaza war, according to the latest UN figures.

In one of the latest deadly incidents, Israeli forces on Sunday killed four members of a Palestinian family, including two children.

Ali Khaled Bani Owda, Waed Bani Owda and two of their children – Othman, 7, and Mohammad, 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 increasing use of deadly force by Israeli forces against Palestinians and tragically we continue to see families and children paying the price,” Heba Morayef, Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International, said on Monday.

“We are deeply concerned that initial information and testimonies suggest the attack may amount to an extrajudicial execution,” Morayef said.

The Israeli government also has drawn international condemnation after it approved plans to extend its authority over more of the West Bank – a move that experts denounced as de facto annexation and a violation of international law.

The UN previously warned that Israel’s annexation push “will undoubtedly accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and their forcible transfer, and lead to the creation of more illegal Israeli settlements”.