67 Bedouin communities comprising 340 families displaced in 2024, according to Palestinian rights group
The Israeli army and illegal settlers launched 2,977 attacks against Palestinian Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank in 2024, a local rights group said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin said that 67 Bedouin communities comprising 340 families were displaced by the Israeli authorities in 2024.
The Israeli violations “were meant to forcibly expel the Palestinians from their areas, in a mass displacement process aimed at creating a population vacuum for the benefit of settlement,” it added.
The rights group termed attacks on the Bedouin communities as "real holocaust," saying that the assaults varied between violence and persecution.
“These violations reflect an organized policy aimed at emptying the Palestinian lands of their indigenous inhabitants and replacing them with Israeli settlers," the statement added.
“These attacks are part of an ethnic cleansing policy pursued by the occupation authorities to empty the Palestinian lands of their legitimate owners, and make them live in a permanent state of threat and displacement."
Over the past few years, the Israeli military has conducted regular raids in the West Bank, which have escalated with the beginning of the war on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinians have also been violently attacked by illegal Israeli settlers.
At least 835 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 6,700 injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The escalation follows a landmark opinion in July by the International Court of Justice that declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
