According to a report by the United Nations released on Friday, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the West Bank due to attacks by Israeli settlers since 2022.
The report, issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories (OCHA), states that these displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in other cities or rural areas they consider safer.
Most of these displaced individuals were located in the West Bank governorates of Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron, which also house the largest number of Israeli settlement outposts.
The report notes that four Palestinian shepherd communities have been completely evacuated and remain vacant. In six other communities, more than 50% of the population has left since 2022, while in seven additional communities, over 25% of the population has left.
The report documents a surge in settler violence across the West Bank in recent years, with three incidents related to settlers occurring daily during the first eight months of 2023, compared to an average of two daily incidents in 2022 and one per day in the year before that.
This marks the highest daily rate of settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians since the UN began recording this data in 2006.
About 93% of Palestinian localities reported an increase in settler violence, while 90% stated that the severity of settler violence had risen since the beginning of 2022.
The report further reveals that about 62% of communities that cited settler violence as a primary reason for restricted access to cultivated grazing land had their crops damaged due to deliberate arson attacks, physical sabotage, or grazing by settlers on land relied upon by Palestinian shepherds.
Nearly 64% of communities attributing restricted access to grazing lands to administrative measures had experienced the declaration of a closed military zone by Israeli authorities, often following confrontations between Palestinian communities and Israeli settlers.
According to the report, in 81% of communities, residents had submitted complaints to the Israeli police regarding some or most of the settler violence incidents they had encountered. However, only 6% of these community representatives were aware of any follow-up measures taken by Israeli authorities.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 59 demolition incidents conducted by Israeli authorities in 2022 and 2023. These demolitions have resulted in 262 people losing their homes.
