Other12 August, 20263 min read
B’Tselem Warns Israeli Ethnic Cleansing Is Displacing Palestinians Across West Bank
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B’Tselem says settlers established an unauthorized outpost in Qusra to drive families from homes. Ethnic cleansing across the West Bank is escalating, displacing Palestinians.
Qusra Outpost, Displacement
Israeli rights group B’Tselem warned that an escalating campaign of “ethnic cleansing” is displacing Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, citing an unauthorized outpost established in the yards of two Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Qusra, a town near Nablus in the northern West Bank.
B’Tselem said the Israeli military failed to remove the settlers or protect the Palestinian families, and B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak said, “Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in full view of everyone,”.
The group said the Israeli military last month enabled efforts by settlers to force members of the Tubasi family from their homes in the nearby village of Jalud after a siege and repeated attacks, before settlers took over the properties.
B’Tselem also said similar patterns have emerged in other Palestinian communities, including Ein Sinya, Turmusaya, Beita and Abu Falah, and it reported that since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, 64 Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been fully displaced and 15 partially displaced.
It added that more than 4,800 Palestinians, including more than 2,300 children, have been affected by these displacements, while UN figures cited in the same report said 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, have been killed in the West Bank so far this year by Israeli forces or settlers.
UN Security Council Warning
At a UN Security Council meeting, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the occupied West Bank has reached a “breaking point” as families in Qusra faced days of attacks by Israeli settlers. Alakbarov told the council that Israeli forces have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the West Bank in 2026 so far, and he said the UN has documented more than 1,430 incidents involving Israeli settlers that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both, affecting approximately 260 Palestinian communities. The UN briefing also described displacement as a systematic pattern, with Alakbarov saying “One hundred and twenty-seven Palestinian communities have experienced full or partial displacement since January 2023, including 47 that have been entirely displaced, affecting more than 6,390 Palestinians,”.
The same UN briefing said settler violence has reached unprecedented levels and that attacks previously concentrated in Area C are spreading to Areas A and B, while the UN permanent observer for the state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, said, “International will cannot bow before the colonial whims of the Israeli government.” In parallel, the UN warned that the West Bank has seen an uptick in violence against healthcare infrastructure, with Israeli carrying out 83 attacks on healthcare transport such as ambulances and 11 attacks on medical centers and facilities, injuring at least 33 people and killing four.
Airstrikes and Rules of Engagement
In Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck and killed a Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, describing it as the first Israeli airstrike in the territory in more than a week. The Times of Israel reported that the Hamas-affiliated civil defense agency said one person was killed, while several who were injured in the strike in the Beit Lahiya area were taken to a Gaza City hospital, and the IDF confirmed it targeted a Hamas commander planning an attack on troops. The IDF said the operative was targeted in an airstrike “to remove the threat to the forces,” and it did not identify the target by name, while the IDF said it received information that Hamas was carrying out a military drill on Tuesday night.
The same report said the IDF stated “there is no change to the rules of engagement, which require every IDF soldier to neutralize any immediate threat, wherever it may be,” and it added there was “no change in the deployment of forces in the sector or in control of the Yellow Line.” Separately, the UN briefing described the West Bank’s trajectory as interconnected steps toward annexation, warning that the deterioration is not sudden but the result of decades of conflict and that these are “interconnected steps” reshaping the West Bank and paving the way toward de facto annexation.