While settler activity, including violence, has long been well-documented in the section of the West Bank designated by the 1993 Oslo accords as under Israeli security and administrative control – the so-called Area C of the occupied territory, including the south Hebron Hills – settlers have switched their focus to mostly rural Area B, which was designated to be under Palestinian civil control initially.
Israeli settlers are pushing ahead with a largely unnoticed de facto annexation of large areas of rural land in the occupied West Bank that has already seen the almost total displacement of Bedouin in large areas.
According to Yoni Mizrachi, a researcher for the settlement monitoring group Peace Now, much of the emptying of this area near Tko’a took place in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, an event that supercharged settler activity on the West Bank.
“You can see how empty it is except for a few outposts,” Mizrachi said, adding that while these illegal outposts framed their activity as “farming” these shacks in reality represented an effort to take control of large rural areas that had succeeded even in the absence of the Israeli military.
At a time when the US president, Donald Trump, has talked about the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza, effectively endorsing its ethnic cleansing, a process of displacement is already advancing in Area B as West Bank Palestinians come under pressure from settlers and their far-right political backers in Israel.
