Israeli settler attacks, supported by the occupation army, continue to target Palestinian villages in the West Bank, as part of a policy aimed at emptying the land of its native inhabitants and imposing new settlement realities. This falls within the framework of the crime of forced displacement, which is prohibited under international law.
At dawn on Friday, dozens of settlers attacked the village of Khirbet Khillet al-Daba’ in the Masafer Yatta area, southeast of Hebron, using sticks and knives. The assault resulted in injuries to around 20 Palestinians, including children, elderly people, and a three-month-old infant.
According to local witnesses, the injuries ranged from bruises and fractures to stab wounds. Nine of the wounded were transferred to hospital for medical treatment.
These attacks are not new to Khillet al-Daba’, which has faced an escalating campaign of displacement for years. In May this year, the occupation army carried out a large-scale demolition operation targeting 25 homes, agricultural structures, and water wells, under the pretext of “unlicensed construction”. In 2022, the Israeli judiciary issued an order to demolish the village and forcibly displace its residents, claiming it lay within a designated military training zone. The occupation seeks to seize vast areas of its land, estimated at around 3,000 dunums.
The West Bank has witnessed a dangerous escalation of attacks by settlers and the army alike. In August alone, more than 1,613 assaults were recorded, including 431 carried out by settlers against Palestinians and their property. These violations, alongside demolition policies, forced displacement, and accelerated settlement construction, which represent a declared prelude to the annexation of the West Bank and the eradication of any possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state, in complete defiance of UN resolutions and the two-state solution.
Meanwhile, as the genocidal war on Gaza continues, claiming so far 64,231 lives and leaving 161,583 injured, the majority of them children and women, in addition to more than 9,000 missing and famine that has killed 339 Palestinians, including 124 children, the spectre of genocide extends to the West Bank. Since 7 October 2023, the occupation army and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have killed no fewer than 1,017 Palestinians, injured around 7,000 others, and arrested more than 18,500.
What is taking place in Khillet al-Daba’ and other West Bank villages is not a series of isolated incidents, but a systematic policy designed to uproot Palestinians from their land, through killing, terror, starvation, and demolition, within the framework of a settlement project built on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
