UN rights chief Volker Turk says Israeli military operation in West Bank\u2019s north has displaced 32,000 Palestinians<\/p>\n
GENEVA:\u00a0Israel\u2019s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip seem aimed at creating \u201cpermanent demographic change,\u201d UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaken together, Israel\u2019s actions appear aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza and the West Bank, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing,\u201d Turk said in a speech before the UN\u2019s Human Rights Council in Geneva.<\/p>\n
Turk pointed in particular to an ongoing, year-long Israeli military operation in the West Bank\u2019s north that has caused the displacement of 32,000 Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the West Bank, entire Bedouin herder communities have been displaced by increasing harassment and violence from Israeli settlers, including near Mikhmas to the east of Ramallah, and Ras Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the year.<\/p>\n
In addition to roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.<\/p>\n
Israel has approved a series of initiatives this month backed by far-right ministers, including launching a process to register land in the West Bank as \u201cstate property\u201d and allowing Israelis to purchase land there directly, in a move condemned by several countries as well as Hamas.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s current government has accelerated settlement expansion, approving a record 54 settlements in 2025, according to Israeli settlement watchdog NGO Peace Now.<\/p>\n
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.<\/p>\n
\u2018Maximum land, minimum Arabs\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the Gaza Strip, most of the territory\u2019s 2.2 million inhabitants have been displaced at least once since the start of the war sparked by Hamas\u2019s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza,\u201d the UN human rights office said in a report last week.<\/p>\n
Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also vowed to encourage \u201cemigration\u201d from the Palestinian territories in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will finally, formally and in practical terms nullify the cursed Oslo Accords and embark on a path toward sovereignty, while encouraging emigration from both Gaza and Judea and Samaria,\u201d he said, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no other long-term solution,\u201d added Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want maximum land and minimum Arabs,\u201d Fathi Nimer, a researcher with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told AFP, referring to a commonly used phrase used to describe Israeli settlement tactics.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UN rights chief Volker Turk says Israeli military operation in West Bank\u2019s north has displaced 32,000 Palestinians GENEVA:\u00a0Israel\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-311806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}