Eight incidents of violence against Palestinians are recorded every day, including intimidation, theft, and assault, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail” and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while the actual volume of daily attacks on Palestinians is much higher...

On October 12, 200 Bedouins in Khirbet Wadi al-Siq, east of the city of Ramallah, left their lands and took refuge in the nearby village of Taybeh after the Israeli army gave them one hour to leave.

Bedouin shepherds left their homes, walking with their livestock, after dozens of settlers, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, arrived in the village. Representatives of Khirbet say that the army did not respond to several requests to postpone the evacuation.

Abu Bashar, who took refuge with dozens of families in Taybeh in the middle of the West Bank, confirms, “We are paying the price for what is happening in their country,” in reference to the war that has been ongoing since October 7 between Israel and Hamas.

The Hamas movement launched a surprise land, air and sea attack on Israeli towns on the border with the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 people on the first day of the attack, according to the authorities, who reported that Hamas fighters also detained about 230 prisoners. Israel responded with intense bombing of Gaza, and he was martyred since At that time, more than eight thousand people were in the Gaza Strip, half of whom were children, according to the latest toll announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The West Bank is also witnessing an escalation in violence, as more than 100 people were martyred in confrontations between Palestinian youths and the occupation army, and more than 490,000 settlers live in the West Bank in settlements considered illegal under international law.  

Eight incidents of violence against Palestinians are recorded every day, including intimidation, theft and assault, according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail” and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while the actual volume of daily attacks on Palestinians is much higher than that.

As for Alia Mlihat, who lives in the Bedouin village of Al-Ma’rajat between Ramallah and Jericho, she confirms, “We no longer sleep. This is a nightmare.” Mlihat fears for the residents of her village of displacement. She says, “Since the beginning of the war, we have begun to see settlers carrying more weapons (...) It is very difficult.” ".

She added, “We ask ourselves what will happen (...) We are experiencing a second Nakba because of the settlers and the army.” Mlihat comes from the Negev desert, from which they were displaced or left in 1948 for the West Bank.

In the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, 7,607 people have been displaced since the start of the current war, more than half of whom are children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. About 1,100 people have also been displaced from their lands during the past year and a half.

As for Abu Bashar, who only wants to return to his home, “I have no other place to go (...) All our things are there, the mortar that we buy in large quantities, the tractors, and the solar panels.” A week after their displacement, the army allowed the residents to return to collect their belongings, but when When they arrived, they found everything destroyed.

Abu Bashar says, “They destroyed everything...bags of animal feed were thrown on the ground.”

Agence France-Presse monitored looted homes, empty wardrobes, broken cots, torn curtains, papers, shoes and toys scattered on the ground. The AFP crew noted the presence of civilian cars in and around Khirbet, with the Israeli flag raised on a number of them.

Abu Bashar asserts that all he wants is for them to let him live in peace, as he can no longer bear it. He adds, "There is a long-term plan to expel us and seize our land. They took this opportunity to do so while everyone was watching what was happening in Gaza."

Israeli human rights activist Guy Hirschfeld explained to AFP that settlers have been intensifying their efforts to expel Palestinians from their lands since the beginning of the war.

He added, "The settlers are exploiting the war to end the cleansing of Area C of non-Jews," referring to the lands classified as "C" or "C" according to the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as these lands constitute 61% of the territory of the West Bank.

Hirschfeld points out that an area of 150 square kilometers in the West Bank has already been emptied of population, and he adds, “Here they cleared 150,000 dunams of non-Jews,” considering this “ethnic cleansing of this area.”

The settlers enjoy strong support from the far-right government coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The head of the West Bank Protection Coalition, Allegra Pacheco, says that the occupation army, which is deployed in large numbers in the West Bank, “does not always interfere in settler violence.” The head of the coalition, which is a group of non-governmental organizations that coordinate humanitarian aid, adds that “the presence of settlers usually leads to an escalation of violence.” .

The occupation forces had demolished a commercial store in Jerusalem under the pretext of not having a license in the town of Sur Baher, south of Jerusalem, in addition to a house in the town of Jabal al-Mukabber. They also demolished a house in Sheikh Jarrah.

As part of these increasing violations, the occupation forces forced a Palestinian citizen to demolish his house in the town of Beit Hanina under the pretext of not having a permit, and settlers also attacked the residents of the Al-Sawwaneh neighborhood.

In Hebron, the occupation authorities were notified by a military order to seize and seize more than two dunums of land in the town of Surif. They also bulldozed lands and uprooted more than 25 trees. A settler accompanied by the occupation army fired live bullets at citizens, and a number of citizens were injured after The settlers attacked them in Masafer Yatta, in addition to dozens of other attacks in various places in the West Bank, according to the weekly settlement report issued by the National Office for Land Defense and Settlement Resistance.

Source: Arab48