UN warns: Israel carrying out mass expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank

(Patria) - The UN Office for Human Rights states that more than 36,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in one year due to violence by Israeli settlers and the army.

Israel has forcibly displaced more than 36,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank during that period, the United Nations warns, emphasizing that the expansion of illegal settlements and attempts to annex territory are accelerating.

A report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released on Tuesday, documents 1,732 incidents of violence by Israeli settlers that caused casualties or material damage between November 2024 and the end of October last year, writes Al Jazeera.

This represents a 24 percent increase compared to 1,400 incidents recorded in the same period the previous year.

"Settler violence has continued in a coordinated, strategic, and largely unpunished manner, with Israeli authorities playing a central role in directing, participating in, or enabling such actions," the report states.

Settler attacks, combined with orders for forced displacement, house demolitions, and military violence, have forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes across the West Bank, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

This includes approximately 32,000 Palestinians who were expelled from the Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and Far’a refugee camps in the north of the territory during an Israeli army operation.

"The displacement of over 36,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank represents a mass expulsion of unprecedented scale, constituting an unlawful transfer prohibited by international humanitarian law.

The displacement in the West Bank, coinciding with the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army, points to a coordinated Israeli policy of forced relocation across the occupied territories, with the aim of permanent displacement, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing," the report adds.

Palestinians in the West Bank are facing an intensified wave of attacks by the Israeli army and settlers in the shadow of the war in Gaza that began in October 2023.

Attacks are recorded daily, and according to the latest UN data, at least 1,071 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.

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

Ali Khaled Bani Owda, Waed Bani Owda, and their two 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 increasingly frequent use of lethal force by Israeli forces against Palestinians, and sadly we continue to see families and children paying the price.

We are deeply concerned because initial information and testimonies suggest that this attack could constitute an extrajudicial execution," stated Amnesty International's Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef.

The Israeli government has also drawn international condemnation after approving plans to expand its authority over most of the West Bank – a move that experts have called a de facto annexation and a violation of international law.

The UN has previously warned that such moves will "undoubtedly accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and their forced relocation and lead to the creation of new illegal Israeli settlements."