Khaberni - Haaretz newspaper published an extensive report documenting scenes of settlement activities and the displacement of Palestinians, which are accelerating at an unprecedented rate in the West Bank.
The report is the result of a field tour organized by the Israeli human rights movement "Peace Now" for a group of Haaretz journalists, aiming to inform them about what is happening in remote areas of the West Bank.
The report, prepared by journalist Moshe Gilad, observes field scenes from the occupied West Bank revealing a reality of accelerated forced displacement of Palestinians, expansion of Israeli settlements, and what Israeli organizations opposing the occupation describe as "effective annexation" of lands without formal declaration.
The report originated from a profoundly harsh humanitarian scene in the Ras Ain al-Auja area north of Jericho, where Palestinian families were disassembling their homes and packing up their few belongings in preparation to leave, in a scene Gilad likened to images from the 1948 Nakba.
The scenes from the field tour in that area describe a bitter reality, where Palestinian families are forced to pack their meager belongings and leave into the unknown under the pressure of daily settler attacks.
"The scene when we arrived was terrible; people gathering their few possessions and heading elsewhere. Men making efforts to load a large, heavy oven, and two men dismantling white walls, apparently to be used to build a house somewhere no one knows," this is how the journalist depicted the grim reality there, saying what he saw there was chilling.
Although Gilad acknowledges that displacement is "always painful," he describes the atmosphere in Ras Ain al-Auja as being burdened with despair, as no one could say for certain where they were going; "perhaps to Area (A) in the West Bank," as some said.
The report indicates that displacement does not only occur by military gunfire but also through a strategy of "economic strangulation" and intimidation practiced by minor settlers and organized groups covered by official political endorsement.
Gilad mentioned that the only person who spoke to the group of Haaretz journalists was the Israeli activist Amir Panski, who described what is happening in (Area C) as "the worst ethnic cleansing in history," being recorded live with sound and images, where crimes are committed "face to face" against poor shepherds deprived of basic life necessities like pasture and water.
Panski revealed that there are hundreds of minor settlers in the area acting like an army, and they have herds of cattle, adding that "everything is planned and organized without improvisation," confirming that there are daily violent acts and documented attacks that no one investigates.
Earlier in January, reports indicated that more than 20 Palestinian families from the Bedouin village of Ras Ain al-Auja in the central occupied West Bank were forced to leave in the face of continuous settler attacks.
Human rights institutions reported that 26 families left the village, which housed about 700 people belonging to more than 100 families, having lived there for decades.
They explained that the families forced to leave last Thursday scattered around the area searching for a safer place, while several other families were packing their belongings in preparation to leave the village on Sunday.
Apartheid
On the other side of this situation, there is an intense settlement movement described by observers from the "Peace Now" movement as "enhanced annexation." Over the past three years, the West Bank has seen the creation of about 100 new settlement farms, which are points not aimed at increasing the number of settlers as much as they are intended to control thousands of dunams of land through one or two families.
This control, according to Haaretz, is accompanied by huge budgets to construct a separate road system, now known as "apartheid roads," designed to connect the settlements to each other and facilitate the movement of Israelis while completely isolating Palestinian communities and restricting their movement behind iron gates and long bypass routes.
Journalist Gilad cites two activists from the Peace Now movement, Hagit Ofran and Yoni Mizrahi, who said they find it difficult to keep up with the pace of changes in the West Bank in recent months. They confirmed that almost every week, a new outpost, or two, is established.
According to Ofran and Mizrahi, the past three years have seen an escalation in the eviction of local Palestinian residents, the construction of hundreds of kilometers of roads, and a massive influx of funds to the settlements.
The data reviewed in the journalistic report reveals the extent of the settlement encroachment; now there are 147 settlements and 191 unauthorized settlement outposts, inhabited by about 478,000 settlers who seek to impose their sovereignty over 2.8 million Palestinians.
Under the current government, specifically with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich being granted broad powers in the Ministry of Defense, 40,000 new housing units have been approved, making the discussion of a "two-state solution" seem harder than ever, according to the newspaper.
Smotrich announced late last year the allocation of more than 1.1 billion shekels (375 million dollars) as part of a new settlement plan aimed at strengthening existing settlements or establishing new ones, earmarking 660 million shekels (296 million dollars) for the establishment of 17 new settlements, and 338 million shekels (106 million dollars) for developing 36 settlement and agricultural outposts.
