The many ways Israeli settlers steal Palestinian homes
An armed Israeli settler talks to another settler and two members of the Palestinian Abdel Basset family, whose home in Hebron city near the Israeli settlement area of Tel Rumeida was taken over by Israeli settlers on 24 March 2025
Mat Nashed reports in Al Jazeera on 28 March 2025:
On Monday, Ghassan Abdel Basset and his family left their home in the occupied West Bank to visit a relative. They were going to break their fast together during the holy month of Ramadan. Later that evening, their neighbours informed them that Israeli settlers had invaded their home.
Ghassan hurried back to confront the settlers, but the Israeli army intervened to block him and his family from getting back to their house. The settlers claimed they bought the home, but the Abdel Basset family never put it up for sale. “The settlers claim they bought the house from someone, but nobody gave this person the legal right to sell our house,” Ghassan told Al Jazeera. “God willing, we will follow the legal procedures [in Israel], and the law will take its course,” he added.
Accelerated expulsion
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. As an occupier, Israel is not allowed to transfer its citizens into occupied territory or enforce its national laws there.
However, more than 750,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements in the West Bank, and many have forged property deeds to provide a veneer of legality to confiscate Palestinian homes.
This is one of several strategies that state-backed settlers use to uproot Palestinians, according to analysts, Palestinians and local rights groups. Settlers – backed by the Israeli state – also vandalise homes, set up outposts, attack farmers, destroy crops and steal livestock under the supervision of the Israeli army.
According to a recent report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot, two Israeli human rights groups, Israeli settlers currently control 14 percent of Palestinian land in the West Bank.