The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), also known as the Ombudsman's Office, stated that Israeli settlement expansion and military restrictions have caused the displacement of 50 Palestinian Bedouin and pastoral communities since late 2023, according to the results of a survey conducted in cooperation with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
This came during a special conference held on Wednesday to launch the results of a survey of Bedouin and pastoral communities in the West Bank, which was attended by representatives of official institutions, relevant ministries, international and UN institutions and civil society organizations, according to the Palestinian News Agency "WAFA".
The survey results indicated that April 2025 witnessed approximately 300 violations targeting individuals and institutions in Bedouin and pastoral communities in the West Bank, amid calls to adopt a comprehensive national plan to enhance the resilience of these communities and provide them with protection and basic services.
During the conference, the Director General of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Ammar Dweik, called for the adoption of a serious national plan for Bedouin and pastoral communities, based on a comprehensive developmental and human rights vision.
Al-Duwaik stressed the need for serious development investment in Bedouin and pastoral communities in the occupied West Bank, and for legal and field protection and the provision of accessible basic services to enhance their resilience in the face of Israeli policies and procedures, such as demolition and continuous demolition notices, seizure of lands and grazing areas, restrictions on movement, settler violence and terrorism, and undermining of livelihoods.
For his part, the acting head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Sufian Abu Harb, stressed the need to provide data on Bedouin and pastoral areas in the West Bank, given that these communities face systematic marginalization, forced displacement, and deprivation of basic services, according to what was reported by Wafa.
For her part, Khadija Zahran, Director of the Policy and Legislation Oversight Department at the Independent Commission, indicated that 53.7% of the population of Bedouin and pastoral communities hold refugee status, which means that half of these residents live in a dual state of historical displacement and current vulnerability, according to Wafa.
Increasingly, Bedouin communities in the West Bank are subjected to attacks and violations by settlers and Israeli forces, causing many of them to be displaced under the weight of these attacks and by force of arms, in favor of settlement expansion and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
On June 10, Amnesty International, in a report it issued, accused Israel of leading and sponsoring a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in the West Bank, stressing that arming thousands of settlers contributed to its escalation.
In the same context, the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine condemned the Israeli attack on land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in the town of Silwan in occupied Jerusalem, considering that the seizure of the land, the uprooting of its trees and its enclosure with a fence constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law and private property rights.
The committee stressed that targeting church properties is part of a broader policy of seizing Palestinian lands, warning of the repercussions of this on the historical and religious identity of the holy city.
She also pointed to the escalating attacks on places of worship, noting that settlers burned parts of two mosques north of Ramallah at dawn on Wednesday and wrote Hebrew slogans on their walls.
These developments come amid growing international human rights warnings about the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank, as Amnesty International recently accused Israel in a report of leading a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against Bedouin and pastoral communities by accelerating settlement construction and expanding control over Palestinian lands.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli escalation in the West Bank has resulted in the killing of 1,169 Palestinians and the injury of 12,666 others, in addition to the arrest of about 23,000 and the displacement of 33,000, according to official Palestinian data.
