Ramallah – Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh called Israel's displacement of the residents of Ein Samia, east of Ramallah, "a racist policy and ethnic cleansing" in a statement on Thursday. 

Over 200 Palestinians decided to leave the community in the occupied West Bank, which they have inhabited since the 1980s, after years of harassment from Israeli settlers and draconian policies from Israeli authorities. 

The Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem said that Israel had made the community's lives "unbearable," pointing to severe restrictions on building and a recent court ruling to raze the local school. 

In his statement, Shtayyeh said that the case of Ein Samia exists in the context of "systematic settlement," and that "Israeli occupation authorities aim to seize it in order to expand the settlements built on the lands of the village, and the targeted villages and towns in all the occupied territories, which are now living under the burden of 'mobile terrorism' of the occupation soldiers and settlers."

Shtayyeh affirmed the right of the residents of the community to return to their lands and properties, and called to halt the displacement.