Early Friday morning, at least 30 Palestinian families were forcibly displaced from the Arab al-Mleihat Bedouin community, situated at the end of the Mu’arrajat road northwest of Jericho, in the northeastern part of the occupied West Bank.
This forced displacement follows a string of escalating assaults and violations carried out by illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers, often accompanied by Israeli soldiers.
Witnesses confirmed that the families began dismantling their tents and relocating under duress, fearing further—and potentially deadly—attacks by colonizers.
This wave of displacement adds to the 20 families who fled the area the previous day, bringing the total number of uprooted households to 50—more than half of the 85 families that comprise the Arab al-Mleihat community. In total, approximately 500 individuals face imminent threat of expulsion.
Residents reported a marked increase in violations and harassment by the paramilitary colonizers in recent weeks. The latest incident occurred just days ago, when the colonizers established an outpost directly in front of a Palestinian home—signaling an intensifying campaign to uproot the community.
Last Monday, illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers set fire to hundreds of dunams of Palestinian farmland and seized nearly one hundred head of livestock in the town of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank’s southern part.
Also Monday, a group of illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, invaded Palestinian olive orchards in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and destroyed more than 150 olive saplings.
On Monday morning, a young Palestinian man sustained injuries after being deliberately rammed by an illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizer near the town of Salfit in the central part of occupied West Bank.
On Saturday, Israeli paramilitary colonizers attacked Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank – part of a trend of increasing colonizer violence against the indigenous Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that rising settler violence in the occupied West Bank is intensifying the forced displacement of Palestinians and severely restricting their access to essential resources.
According to OCHA, Israeli settlers have carried out approximately 740 attacks during the first half of this year alone. These assaults have resulted in the injury of at least 340 Palestinians and caused widespread property damage.
The office emphasized that the spike in settler-led violence poses a serious threat to the livelihoods and physical safety of Palestinian communities, further compounding an already fragile humanitarian situation.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”
