According to a Washington Post headline today, “As settler violence surges,
West Bank Palestinians fear new displacement.”
The article quotes B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group:
at least seven Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers since the war in Gaza began; more than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces over the same time period, according to the United Nations. Some 500 Palestinians have been driven from their homes.
The article says that “haunted by memories of displacement, Palestinian families fear they are living through another period of forcible dispossession.” It then quotes President Biden who, “in a rare direct condemnation of the violence,” said last week that attacks by “extremist settlers” amounted to “pouring gasoline” on fires already burning. “It has to stop,” he said. “They have to be held accountable.”
B’Tselem, the rights group, is also quoted in the article saying that “settlers are using time-tested methods of intimidation and violence to force Palestinians from their homes.” The article provides this example:
Armed settlers began roaming through the small Bedouin community of Wadi Siq nearly every day after Oct. 7, threatening Palestinians with a massacre if they refused to leave, according to Tariq Mustafa, who fled the area to a neighboring village with his family.
“Get out of here; go to Jordan,” the settlers shouted in Arabic before knocking down tents. Mustafa said he called the Israeli police, but the officer hung up when he tried to report the incident.
Mustafa said about 40 people have been forced from the area, a scenic valley east of Ramallah. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to go home.
“The war in Gaza gave the settlers the green light,” he said. “Before, they would yell at us to go to Ramallah. Now they are telling us to go all the way to Jordan.”
The article gives many details about various settler leaders and groups, and then reports:
The Jewish population in the West Bank passed half a million earlier this year — in land once envisioned as part of a Palestinian state — and settlements have continued to expand under Israel’s right-wing government. Palestinians accuse the movement’s most radical fringe of cynically using the Hamas attack to further their long-held aim of seizing more land.
