Jerusalem, April 17, 2024 – Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said the Israeli military either took part in or did not protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the West Bank that have displaced people from 20 communities and have entirely uprooted at least 7 communities since October 7, 2023.
It alleged that the Israeli settlers assaulted, tortured, and committed sexual violence against Palestinians, stolen their belongings and livestock, threatened to kill them if they did not leave permanently, and destroyed their homes and schools under the cover of the ongoing hostilities in Gaza.
It states that many Palestinians, including entire communities, have fled their homes and lands.
According to the body, the military has not assured displaced residents that it will protect their security or allow them to return, forcing them to live in precarious conditions elsewhere.
“Settlers and soldiers have displaced entire Palestinian communities, destroying every home, with the apparent backing of higher Israeli authorities,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.
“While the attention of the world is focused on Gaza, abuses in the West Bank, fueled by decades of impunity and complacency among Israel’s allies, are soaring.”
Human Rights Watch investigated attacks that forcibly displaced all residents of Khirbet Zanuta and Khirbet al-Ratheem south of Hebron, al-Qanub east of Hebron, and Ein al-Rashash and Wadi al-Seeq, east of Ramallah, in October and November 2023.
The evidence shows that armed settlers, with the active participation of army units, repeatedly cut off road access and raided Palestinian communities, detained, assaulted, and tortured residents, chased them out of their homes and off their lands at gunpoint or coerced them to leave with death threats, and blocked them from taking their belongings.
Human Rights Watch spoke to 27 witnesses of the attacks, and viewed videos that residents filmed, showing harassment by men in Israeli military uniforms carrying M16 assault rifles. As of April 16, the Israel Defense Forces did not reply to questions Human Rights Watch sent by email on April 7.
Settler attacks on Palestinians increased in 2023 to their highest level since the UN began recording this data in 2006. This was the case even before the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 that killed about 1,100 people inside Israel.
Following October 7, the Israeli military called up 5,500 settlers who are Israeli army reservists, including some with criminal records of violence against Palestinians, and assigned them to West Bank “regional defense” battalions.
The authorities distributed 7,000 guns to battalion members and others, including “civilian security squads” established in settlements, according to Haaretz, and Israeli rights groups.
Media reported that settlers left leaflets and sent threats on social media to Palestinians after October 7, such as warnings to “flee to Jordan” or be “exterminate[d],” and that “the day of revenge is coming.”
The UN has recorded more than 700 settler attacks between October 7 and April 3, with soldiers in uniform present in nearly half of the attacks.
Attacks since October 7 have displaced over 1,200 people, including 600 children, from rural herding communities. At least 17 Palestinians were killed and 400 wounded, while Palestinians have killed 7 settlers in the West Bank since October 7, the UN reported.
On April 12, the body of a 14-year-old Israeli boy was found after he had disappeared from the settlement outpost of Malachei Hashalom.
Since then, settlers have attacked at least 17 Palestinian villages and communities in the West Bank, according to OCHA. Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported that four Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, have been killed in these incidents, and that houses and vehicles were set on fire, and livestock killed.
None of those evicted from the five communities investigated have been able to return, Human Rights Watch found. The Israeli military either rejected or did not answer requests to allow residents to return, leaving Palestinians without protection from the same armed settlers and soldiers who threatened to kill them if they returned. One family with seven children, forced to flee on foot from al-Qanub, now lives in a small cinderblock storeroom with no money to pay the rent.
Haqel: In Defense of Human Rights, an Israeli human rights organization, petitioned the Israeli High Court to instruct the army to protect and allow six displaced communities to return, including Khirbet Zanuta, but the Israeli state attorney’s February 20 response claimed that no forced displacement occurred, and that Palestinians had left voluntarily due to herding and agricultural problems, according to Haqel.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for May 1.
The displaced residents raised sheep. Some said that Israeli attackers stole vehicles, cash, and household appliances, as well as sheep and fodder that families had bought on credit and now cannot repay. Other families escaped with their flocks but had to build new shelters and have nowhere to graze them.
Settlers have subsequently been grazing their own sheep on the communities’ lands, according to rights groups. The Israeli rights group B’Tselem reported that as of mid-March, settlers had taken over 4,000 dunams (about 988 acres) of Palestinian grazing lands since October 7.
Repeated settler attacks, often at night, have caused fear and mental health harm. Children and their parents said children have had nightmares and difficulty concentrating. The attacks destroyed schools in two of the five communities. Most children were unable to go to school for a month or longer after being displaced.
The Israeli police have law-enforcement jurisdiction over settlers, while the army has jurisdiction over Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. After October 7, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir instructed police not to enforce the law against violent settlers, an Israeli investigative journalist reported. Police denied the report, though Ben-Gvir did not. The vast majority of Palestinian complaints against settlers and the Israeli military do not result in indictments, based on official data compiled by Yesh Din.
After October 7, the National Security Ministry distributed thousands of guns, including to settlers. In December, the Attorney General’s Office stated in the Knesset that they had found the Ministry had unlawfully approved 14,000 firearms permits.
Countries including the United States, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom have licensed exports of weapons, including assault rifles and ammunition, to Israel. The US has approved more than 100 weapons transfers to Israel since October 7, and exported 8,000 military rifles and 43,000 handguns in 2023, before pausing a shipment of 24,000 assault rifles in December over concerns about settler attacks. It is “almost a certainty” that settlers are using US-made guns, a former US State Department official said.
Since December, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France announced visa policies that barred some violent settlers from entry. The US and UK imposed financial sanctions on a total of eight settlers and two settlement outposts. EU sanctions are still being discussed, due to staunch reluctance by the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Forcible transfer or deportation and the extensive destruction and appropriation of property in occupied territory are war crimes. Israeli authorities’ systematic oppression of and inhumane acts against Palestinians, including war crimes, committed with the intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians, amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
Governments should suspend military support to Israel, given the risk of complicity in abuses. They should also review and possibly suspend bilateral agreements, such as the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and ban trade with settlements in the occupied territories. The UK should immediately withdraw the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, which restricts public bodies in the UK from deciding not to do business with companies’ operating in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The US, the EU, UK, and other countries should take action to ensure accountability for those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including criminal investigations and prosecutions under universal jurisdiction and at the International Criminal Court. This should include those responsible under command responsibility for failures to prevent or punish crimes by those in their chain of command.
In addition, they should consider sanctions on those responsible for ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestinian communities or for the prevention of displaced Palestinians from returning to their lands, until those subject to sanctions end the attacks and ensure the displaced Palestinians can return, Human Rights Watch said.
“Palestinian children have seen their families brutalized, and their homes and schools destroyed, and the Israeli authorities are ultimately to blame,” Van Esveld said. “Senior state officials are fueling or failing to prevent these attacks, and Israel’s allies are not doing enough to stop that.”
