The West Bank villages wiped off the map by Israeli settler violence
Israeli settlers harass Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta, South Hebron Hills, occupied West Bank.
Oren Ziv writes in +972 on 4 December 2024:
Several weeks before October 7, +972 Magazine published an investigation into the seizure by Israeli settlers of a vast area of the occupied West Bank, stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Through the establishment of an array of new settler outposts and sustained harassment of Palestinian shepherding communities, which was often ignored or actively facilitated by the Israeli army, settlers managed to expel virtually all the Palestinians living in an area measuring approximately 150 square kilometers.
In that investigation, we reported on the forcible displacement of four shepherding communities within a period of four years, totaling several hundred people. But over the past 14 months since the Gaza war began, what was already a dramatic process of ethnic cleansing has accelerated exponentially.
According to new data gathered by the left-wing Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee their homes since October 7 as a result of Israeli settler attacks. Of these, seven have been partially displaced — meaning the expulsion of at least one residential cluster, located several hundred meters away from the next — and 50 have been wiped off the map entirely.
Most of the displacement has been concentrated in four areas: the northern Jordan Valley, east of Ramallah, southeast of Bethlehem, and the South Hebron Hills. “Unsurprisingly, most new outposts have been established in these areas,” Etkes explained. “There is a direct link between their establishment and the rise in violence [against Palestinians].”
Kerem Navot and another left-wing Israeli NGO, Peace Now, estimate that since October 2023, at least 41 illegal settler outposts and herding farms have been established in the West Bank. At least 10 of these were built in close proximity to Palestinian communities that were subsequently forced to flee their lands. In addition, settlers have set up “observation posts” or planted Israeli flags in areas abandoned by Palestinians in order to prevent them from returning.
“Expelling [Palestinian] communities has helped the settlers take over hundreds of thousands of dunams of grazing and agricultural land,” Etkes said — all of which is done “with the backing of the Israeli army and police. Even if the state does not officially declare it, it permits it. This cannot happen in so many communities without [the assistance of] the military.”
In some cases, the army has been documented playing an active role in the displacement. According to multiple Palestinian testimonies, settlers who in the past would harass them while dressed in civilian clothes now arrive armed and in military uniform — part of a growing phenomenon of settlers abusing their role as army reservists amid the ongoing war in Gaza. They carry out violent raids, enter homes, steal livestock, and even conduct arrests, including of Israeli and international activists who come to support vulnerable Palestinian communities.
Farid Hamamdeh with his children in Fathu Sedru, South Hebron Hills, occupied West Bank
“You definitely see it recurring,” Etkes told +972. “The army is aware and participates, whether it’s regular soldiers or settler militiamen and ‘area defense’ personnel who operate under the [aegis of the] army.”
These attacks usually occur within what is known as Area C of the West Bank, the roughly 60 percent of the territory in which the Israeli military exercises direct civil and security control. Around half a million Israeli settlers — all of those dwelling illegally in the West Bank — live in these regions, alongside approximately 300,000 Palestinians. While settlements and outposts expand freely onto privately-owned Palestinian land, Israel’s Civil Administration — the arm of the military responsible for administering the occupation — bans the vast majority of construction in Palestinian communities in Area C.
The result, illustrated by the testimonies below from seven villages across the West Bank, has been the expulsion of dozens of Palestinian shepherding communities, enabling further expansion of Israeli settlements and outposts onto their lands.