- Settlers seizing West Bank land
- ICJ to rule on Israel’s occupation
- 513 Palestinians killed since October
As Israel conducts a deadly war on Gaza, settlers are taking advantage of the absence of public focus on the occupied West Bank to drive Palestinians from their homes there.
The International Court of Justice, the world’s top court, will declare on Friday whether Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, a decision that may enrage Israeli settlers and the broader settlement movement.
Settlers have been particularly encouraged by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have both sought to build West Bank settlements, which violate international law, since taking office in 2022.
The Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities and military outposts in southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,139 people and took more than 250 captives back to Gaza, created a favourable political environment for the theft of large swaths of Palestinian land with little international pushback or outcry.
According to Peace Now, a non-profit organization that monitors land confiscation in the West Bank, Israel has seized 23.7 square kilometres (9.15 square miles) of Palestinian land this year. At the same time, Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 38,848 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 89,459, continues.
That makes 2024 the top year for Israeli land seizures in the last three decades.
How many Palestinians in the West Bank have been displaced since October 7?
The Israeli army and settlers have evicted 1,285 Palestinians and destroyed 641 houses, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
At least 15 Palestinian farming towns have been thoroughly cleansed, while Israeli violence has forced people from many other communities to flee. Many farmers were forced to seek temporary safety in nearby West Bank communities.
Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed on the White House lawn, the West Bank has been divided into three zones.
Area C was under Israeli administration, Area B was under dual Palestinian-Israeli rule, and Area A was governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was founded in 1994.
The Palestinian Farmers Union’s executive director, Abbas Milhem, stated that settlers are mainly targeting rural areas in Area C.
He stated that most of the ethnic cleansing is taking place in the Jordan Valley against cattle producers. Many people were forced out of their communities without being allowed to bring anything with them, including mattresses and blankets for their children to sleep on.
Shortly after October 7, Ben-Gvir encouraged these attacks by supplying thousands of semiautomatic rifles and other weapons to settlements and far-right Israelis.
Palestinian farmers are frequently unarmed and incapable of self-defence.
Farmers have nothing to shield them except their exposed chests, Abbas explained.
How many Israeli settlers lived in the West Bank before October 7?
Before the Hamas-led attacks, the West Bank was already home to up to 700,000 people. They dwell in 150 settlements and 128 outposts, which are improvised encampments ranging from a single caravan to a few structures erected on Palestinian territory.
The number of colonies and outposts has increased dramatically since the early 1990s, when there were around 250,000 settlers in the West Bank, according to Peace Now, and they are deemed illegal under international law. The number of Israeli settlers living in Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem has increased from 800 in 1993 to around 3,000 by 2023.
Is there a secure place for Palestinians in the West Bank now?
No, Palestinians have faced harassment and violence in several locations of the West Bank.
In February, for example, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian shepherds near Hebron, forcing them to leave their pastures and employing drones to terrify their cattle, resulting in abortions and stillbirths during the lambing season. This was one of 561 incidences of Israeli settler violence on Palestinians documented by OCHA between October 7 and February 20.
In another incident in April, settlers stormed Bukra, Deir Dibwan, and Kfar Malik – villages under PA administration in Areas A and B – tearing down tents used by displaced people, seizing goats, and beating up inhabitants.
Furthermore, Israeli forces have conducted many incursions in the West Bank since the beginning of the Gaza war. In November, hospitals were encircled, and numerous people were killed during a large raid on Jenin. Later that month, other raids were carried out in Jenin and other parts of the West Bank.
At the end of December, Israeli forces began a concerted midnight attack on ten West Bank communities, including Hebron, Halhul, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, el-Bireh, Jericho, and Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority’s administrative capital. The raids lasted for several days.
Undercover operations killed three people in a raid on a Jenin hospital in January, and raids have occurred at regular intervals throughout the West Bank since then. In June, approximately 100 people were taken up as the Israeli military deployed helicopter gunships to conduct a large-scale raid into the Jenin refugee camp, killing five people.
“There is no place in the West Bank that is safe [for people to go],” Abbas told the crowd. “It makes no difference whether you’re in Area A or B. “The settlers and army are attacking everywhere.”
How many Palestinians have Israel murdered in the West Bank since the Gaza conflict began?
According to OCHA, 513 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and Israelis in the West Bank since October 7. The great majority had been civilians.
In comparison, Israeli troops killed 199 Palestinians during the first nine months of 2023.
According to Mairav Zonszein, an Israel-Palestine researcher with the International Crisis Group, the increase in Palestinian casualties is linked to Israel’s attempt to accelerate the annexation of the West Bank.
Zonszein stated that settlers believe Israel’s security is dependent on the construction and expansion of illegal settlements despite evidence to the contrary.
Since October 7, the government has been more willing to carry out attacks in the West Bank, and they are engaging in collective punishment, she stated.
“They are driven by the idea that they need to keep building [settlements].”
How has the international community responded?
By placing punishment on the settlers.
In February, the administration of US President Joe Biden froze four Israeli settlers’ assets in the United States for their involvement in attacks on Palestinians and Israeli activists.
On July 11, the United States levied additional sanctions against three more Israeli settlers and four Israeli outposts.
The sanctions freeze all assets owned by those targeted in locations under US jurisdiction.
Later that week, the European Union imposed similar fines on other settlers and settler “entities”. The penalties froze their assets and prevented them from receiving any direct or indirect transactions.
According to Israel-Palestine specialist Omar Rahman of the Middle East Council for Global Affairs think tank in Doha, Qatar, the fines on individuals and unlawful outposts established a significant precedent.
However, Rahman believes the penalties are insufficient to halt Israel’s settlement growth.
He called for sanctions against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, echoing the views of Israeli and international human rights organizations.
[Confiscating Palestinian land] is a process that has been on for more than a century, with the Zionist movement progressively pushing Palestinians off their land, he explained.
“But these men [Smotrich and Ben-Gvir] are specifically focused on that goal. Their position is to dispossess Palestinians ultimately.
How many more illegal settlements are being established on the West Bank?
On May 29, the Israeli Army’s Civil Administration, which was established in 1981 to oversee all civil matters for Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents in Area C of the West Bank, delegated control of building regulations and the management of farmland, parks, and forests, among other things, to the Settlements Administration, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The action gave Smoltrich the authority to speed up and authorize settlement construction while increasing the demolitions of Palestinian houses.
Furthermore, Smotrich stated that if the International Court of Justice declares Israel’s occupation illegal, he will put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the West Bank.
Smotrich accepted five Israeli outposts in late June, following Norway, Ireland, and Spain’s move to symbolically recognize a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israel responded to the acknowledgement of statehood with defiance, stating that while the global community can make verdicts, Israel retains power.
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Smotrich has also threatened to annex the West Bank in punishment for the Palestinian Authority’s “unilateral efforts” to achieve recognition for a Palestinian state, as well as its request for arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders involved in war crimes in Gaza.
Rahman went on to say that unless the international world takes action against Israel, Israel will continue to remove Palestinians from the West Bank and commit “genocide” in Gaza.
There must be a significant deployment of punitive measures against Israel. He stated that that was the only way to progress toward a political settlement.
