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Palestinian Displacement (Q1 2026)
Number of Palestinians displaced in the West Bank due to settler violence and restrictions during early 2026.
Primary Sources
A strategy 'to make life intolerable': Israeli settlers are driving ...
Taybeh, a small hilltop town in the heart of the West Bank is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. After increasing attacks from Israeli settlers it now feels itself under siege and is fighting for its very existence.The town’s ancient Greek name was Ephraim where, according to the gospels, Jesus hid with his disciples from the Jewish religious hierarchy, the Sanhedrin, before making his final fateful trip to Jerusalem.A church was built here in the fifth century, and the entirely Christian community survived the crusaders, conquest by Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub or Saladin, the Ottoman empire, the British empire, and three Arab-Israeli wars, but its inhabitants say its long-term future is in question.There are four substantial Israeli settlements around Taybeh, and countless unofficial outposts have also sprung up on the steep hills overlooking the Jordan valley. They have been set up by messianic Jews who send their young people, the “hilltop youth”, to harass and intimidate local Palestinians in the surrounding countryside.The relentless land grabs and intimidation is a pattern repeated up and down the West Bank in a campaign the UN has called ethnic cleansing, which has been driven by hardline members of the ruling coalition, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.A photo taken from Saint George Greek Melkite Catholic Church shows parts of the mostly Christian town of Taybeh, in the Israeli occupied West Bank, days before Christmas festivities on December 22, 2025 Photograph: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty Images“First they kicked the Bedouin out in the last three years and put up their caravans and bring their cows and sheep. They are using the land without any permission from the owners and from ourselves,” said Father Bashar Fawadleh, the parish priest of Christ the Redeemer church.After driving out Bedouin nomads and their flocks, Fawadleh said the settlers began to drive their cows and sheep into the olive groves and fields which have been Taybeh’s lifeblood for millennia.“For three years now, we have been forbidden to visit our land. We are forbidden from tending the olive trees,” he said. The only times local people venture out into the countryside is when diplomats from the French and Italian consulates come to accompany them for a few days each harvest season.Catholic nuns and members of the clergy stand at the fifth-century Church of St George in the Palestinian Christian villa...
Israeli settlers turn Passover into celebration of ethnic cleansing
Jordan Valley, Occupied West Bank – Haitham al-Zayed, 24, says his fondest memories as a child were spent swimming in al-Auja’s lush pools. “You’d always find someone there during hot days. Everyone went there to cool down,” he said.Three months after he and his family were forcibly displaced by Jewish settlers from Shallal al-Auja – located beside the stream coming down from al-Auja spring in the southern occupied West Bank – he was horrified, but unsurprised, when thousands of settlers converged on the spring during the Jewish festival of Passover at the start of this month.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3‘Neither war nor peace’: What Gaza looks like six months into ‘ceasefire’list 2 of 3Photos: Six months into ‘ceasefire’, Gaza suffers under Israeli attackslist 3 of 3Iran ceasefire: Not an off-ramp for the US but a life-saving ejection seatend of listIn one video circulating on settler chat groups, settler children waded and splashed in the same natural pools where Haitham had once swam. Their parents barbecued nearby, speaking to the camera with elation. “Happy holiday! Look at this wonder,” one man announced. “After years that Jews could not come here, the people of Israel returned to their land.”The video then focused on who made this possible: The so-called hilltop youth, the networks of young settlers carrying out systematic violence against Palestinians, driving out dozens of communities across the West Bank since 2023. “Do you know thanks to whom this wonderful thing happened?” one man said. “Thanks to a few youth – 16 years old! That are going around this area with their flocks. I saw them stubbornly redeeming the land for us.”For Haitham, watching the video from the area his family has been displaced to – a patch of desert, mountainous terrain in an area called Jabal al-Birka, roughly 5km (3 miles) from Shallal al-Auja and within direct sightline of it – the footage was “very hard to see”, if unsurprising. In the background of the celebrations, he could make out the remains of structures damaged or burned in the months of escalating violence that preceded their displacement. “It’s not just one incident,” he said. “It’s all systematic. It’s tied to the expansion of annexation in the West Bank.”According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 1,727 Palestinians from 36 communities in the West Bank were displaced in the first three months of 2026 alone, due to settler violence and access re...
Illegal Israeli settlers launch violent attacks on Palestinian towns of ...
Illegal Israeli settlers launch violent attacks on Palestinian towns of Qusra and Jalud in occupied West Bank, opening fire on residents and setting fire...
Tensions in the northern West Bank continue to rise as a group of ...
Tensions in the northern West Bank continue to rise as a group of 'Israeli' settlers blocked the main entrances to the town of Qusra. The move...
