Settler attacks and Hebron operation deepen displacement in the occupied West Bank

Right · 1Arab News reports that settlement expansion and settler violence are shaping daily life for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, with movement restrictions, checkpoints and closures. It illustrates this through a Palestinian journalist, Ahmad Alrajabi, whose village closes at 9 p.m. 1 Right · 1According to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), at least 224 outposts have been created in the West Bank since 7 October 2023, against an average of eight a year in the previous decade. Some were later legalised retroactively and given military protection. 1 Right · 1In the northern Jordan Valley, Israel announced a separation barrier called the Crimson Thread, which the OHCHR says would cut the area off from the rest of the West Bank and consolidate annexation. At least 10 communities have been fully or partially displaced there, and the last 13 families of Khirbet Yarza left by March after months of attacks. 1

Right · 1OHCHR spokesperson Mayy El Sheikh argued that settler violence is state violence because it implements policy, takes place with the acquiescence or participation of Israeli forces, and goes unpunished. B'Tselem's Yair Dvir said the violence is a system with a clear logic and urged the international community to move from condemnation to action. 1 Right · 1The article says Israeli forces had killed 1,042 people in the West Bank as of 9 October since the start of the conflict, and that the last conviction of an Israeli soldier for killing a Palestinian there was in 2020. It also notes that Itamar Ben Gvir, national security minister, was sanctioned in June 2025 by the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway over alleged incitement. Its only Israeli official response is from Finance Minister Smotrich's office, which said most of about $200 million deducted in April from Palestinian Authority funds went to settling debts to Israeli utilities, with the rest frozen to protest Palestinian steps in international institutions. 1 Left · 1Al Jazeera reports that more than 3,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes in Hebron as the Israeli army escalates a military operation begun on Friday, after two soldiers were killed in a shooting near the city. Hebron Governor Khaled Dudin said 488 families, 3,171 people, had been displaced across the governorate, while Mayor Yousef al-Jabari said 3,043 were from Hebron city. The Palestinian Prisoner's Society said at least 71 people were detained over four days. 2

Left · 1Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged an operation "unseen" since the 1967 war, and he and Defence Minister Israel Katz announced they would apply the "Jenin camp model" to Hebron, involving forced evacuation, home inspections, weapons confiscation and bulldozing roads. Al Jazeera says soldiers have turned dozens of evacuated homes into barracks and field interrogation centres. 2 Left · 1Al Jazeera quotes historian Noman Amr, who calls the evacuations collective punishment aimed at imposing "a new reality", and who says settlers form an armed militia of more than 150,000 people, a figure presented as his claim. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said the army set up 220 barriers across Hebron, and Mayor al-Jabari accused Netanyahu's government of using the operation to win settler votes before Israel's general election on Tuesday. 2 Left · 1Al Jazeera also says the Israeli army would bar Palestinian workers from most of the West Bank through Monday and fully close crossings on Tuesday, election day. It compares Hebron with the early-2025 "Iron Wall" operation in Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem camps, which it says killed at least 102 people and displaced more than 33,000, and cites an OHCHR report that those actions "appear to amount to collective punishment and raise concerns of ethnic cleansing". 2