Middle East: Over 2022 Palestinians left West Bank in 1.110 due to settler violence

“Israeli settler violence has displaced more than 1.100 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2022.” This is what we read in a report published by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations (Ocha). In particular, 1.105 people from 28 communities – around 12 percent of the population – have been forced to abandon their places of residence since 2022, due to settler violence and denial of access to grazing land against farmers. The latter, Ocha says, have moved to other locations that they consider safer. Most of the displaced people were located in the governorates of Ramallah, Nablus e Hebron, which also have the largest number of Israeli settlement outposts. Four communities were completely displaced and now stand empty, including two that were evicted during the assessment.

In six other communities, more than 50 percent of residents have left by 2022, and in another seven communities, more than 25 percent of the community has left. In the first eight months of 2023, an average of three settler-related incidents occurred per day, compared to an average of two per day in 2022 and one per day the previous year. This is the highest daily average of settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians since United Nations they began recording this data in 2006, OCHA indicated. About 93 percent of communities reported an increased frequency of settler violence, and 90 percent reported that the severity of settler violence had increased since the beginning of 2022, the report concluded. Among the violence cited by the report are the destruction of crops, damage to water sources, difficulties in accessing health and education and demolitions.