Bethlehem - Saba:
The Applied Research Institute - Al-Quds (ARIJ) reported that settler attacks against Palestinians from January to June of this year reached 1,444 assaults, with 38 communities completely displaced from their houses.
In a report issued on Thursday, cited by the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, the institute stated that settler attacks in the West Bank have seen an unprecedented escalation. It emphasized that the price paid by Palestinian citizens is not measured solely by the number of attacks but by the daily suffering affecting all aspects of life—including restricted access to water sources, agricultural lands (especially those near settlements and outposts), and movement restrictions as settlers block village entrances and roads, subjecting Palestinians to various forms of physical and psychological violence.
The report confirmed that Palestinians are now trapped not only by the apartheid separation wall but also by a network of violence that begins with the settlers and extends to unjust Israeli military laws.
It stressed that these attacks are not isolated incidents but part of a systematic policy of violence aimed at displacing Palestinians from their land, emptying areas of their Palestinian residents, and paving the way for the expansion of illegal settlements and the seizure of land for various settlement purposes.
The report highlighted a clear escalation in attacks, with 579 incidents in 2020, 911 in 2021, 1,527 in 2022, 2,191 in 2023, and 2,444 in 2024. As of June this year, the number has already reached 1,444 attacks.
The violations committed by settlers between January and June 2024 included assaults on places of worship, land seizures, attacks on civilians, livestock, property, and natural resources, distributed as follows:
- Bethlehem (87), Hebron (246), Jenin (2), Jericho (138), Quds (160), Nablus (217), Qalqilya (44), Ramallah & Al-Bireh (229), Salfit (148), Tubas (155), and Tulkarm (18).
The report added that settler groups have worked in recent months to forcibly displace dozens of Bedouin families from their houses in the West Bank, particularly targeting Bedouin communities in Hebron (southern West Bank) and Ramallah & Al-Bireh (central West Bank)nwhile seizing Palestinian lands they inhabited.
ARIJ referenced a study by the Israeli organization B’Tselem on Bedouin communities targeted by settler groups since the start of Israel’s aggression on Gaza in October 2023 until the report’s publication. It found that 38 communities were completely displaced (with a focus on Bedouin communities in Ramallah, Al-Bireh, and Hebron). Additionally, other communities faced partial displacement, including:
- Quds (1), Bethlehem (5), Hebron (8), Jericho (1), Nablus (6), Ramallah (13), Salfit (2), and Tubas (2).
ARIJ concluded that the violations committed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank—including killings, live fire, physical assaults, arson of lands and trees, property destruction, and forced displacement—constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
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