West Bank Bedouin communities affected by Israel’s policy of forced displacement

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has said that at least 40 Bedouin communities across the occupied West Bank have been forcibly expelled as a result of Jewish settlers’ attacks and crimes, Anadolu agency has reported. The ministry said yesterday that it views with great concern the crime of forced displacement committed against the Bedouin communities throughout the occupied Palestinian territory by Israeli settler-colonial gangs, especially in Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley.

It expressed profound concern over “colonists’ attacks against Palestinian Bedouin communities, which are carried out with the support and protection of the [Israeli] occupation army and the direct supervision of the extremist Ministers in the Israeli government, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.” The latest of these was the forced expulsion of the last Palestinian Bedouin families in Umm Al-Jamal in the northern Jordan Valley.

Such Israeli acts, said the ministry, are on a par with “ethnic cleansing” as part of the “ongoing gradual annexation” of the occupied West Bank. “Israel wants to empty the area of its Palestinian residents in order to use it for its illegal settlement enterprise, with the aim of undermining any chance for the embodiment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The Palestinian ministry stated that it is following “this complex crime” and is “reporting it to the competent international courts”, adding that all decisions or sanctions issued by the international community or states on colonial activities as well as on colonists accused of committing crimes against the Palestinian people do not appear to deter the criminals responsible.

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“There needs to be dissuasive international sanctions, not only on colonists and their armed militias, but also on ministers and officials in the Israeli government who provide protection, support and funding to the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.”

According to the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israeli settlers have carried out a total of 1,530 attacks in the occupied West Bank from the beginning of 2024 until the end of July. The data indicated that 18 Palestinians have been killed by settlers and more than 785 have been injured as a result of these attacks since 7 October last year.

The Israeli leftist Peace Now movement has said that half a million Israelis live in 146 large settlements and 144 settlement outposts established on the West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem.

In parallel with its devastating war on Gaza since 7 October, the Israeli army has expanded its operations in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while settlers have escalated their attacks on Palestinians there, killing 635 and wounding about 5,400 others, according to official Palestinian data.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed or wounded more than 132,000 Palestinians, most of them children and women, with a further 10,000 missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by the occupation state. Much of the Gaza Strip has been laid to waste, and Israeli impediments to the distribution of humanitarian aid mean that starvation is now a reality for 2.3 million people in the enclave.

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