The Numbers Behind the 'Sacred Work' of Cleansing West Bank Palestinians for Future Jewish Villas
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 12:20AM Since January 2023, entire families have packed up their belongings and left the areas where they grew up, places in which they invested their labor and their hopes. Some 2,000 people, including 900 children, have been forced to leave in just the past four and a half months. 45 communities have been dismantled entirely, including nine so far this year
by Amira Hass 20 May 2026 Haaretz
Israeli soldiers patrol the market in the Old City of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, last year. Credit: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP
5,375 – that's the number of attacks Jewish Israeli civilians committed in the West Bank between the start of 2023 and just over a week ago. These are attacks that ended in dead and wounded Palestinians and/or thefts of sheep and damage to animals, plants, property and livelihood.
They don't include the times when these ambassadors of hatred and supremacy merely engaged in intimidation and provocation, without killing, stealing, torching homes, cutting down trees or trampling over fields.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which collects and corroborates these figures and then releases weekly, monthly and annual summaries, can't keep track of every case of "mere" harassment, even though harassment is a natural part of the sacred work of cleansing more Palestinian territory for the sake of future villas for Jews.
Nor does the data include the tens of thousands of official raids on Palestinian communities that the army carried out nightly throughout this period as part of its routine task to bolster our foreign rule and the expansion of settlements and to make Palestinians' lives ever harder.
During those 5,375 attacks and raids by Israeli Jewish civilians, 64 Palestinians were murdered. Of these, 36 were slain by civilian assailants and 17 by soldiers whose job is to protect the assailants. In the other cases, no definite conclusion has been reached as to whether the killers were civilians or soldiers.
One murder victim follows another, one bereaved family follows another, open fury follows hidden fury. Helplessness mingles with determination to prevent the next raid. Some of the dead received a little attention from the media in Israel and abroad before being permanently swallowed up by the black hole of forgetfulness and disinterest to which the roughly 5,000 Palestinians who were wounded by Jewish civilians or soldiers in similar circumstances have been consigned.
And here's a piece of data that would especially lead the heroes of the settlement outposts and farming outposts, the establishment's darlings, to pat themselves on the back: Almost 6,000 Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes under pressure of the incessant attacks and harassment.
Since January 2023, entire families have packed up their few portable belongings and left the areas where they grew up, places in which they invested their labor, their plans and their hopes.
Around a third of them – almost 2,000 people, including 900 children – have been forced to leave in just the past four and a half months. A full 45 communities have been abandoned and dismantled entirely, including nine just since the start of this year. In another 72 communities, only some of the residents have left.
And all the numbers are rising. In 2023, settlers and their guests launched 1,291 attacks, both before and after October 7. The lords of the land had 1,449 similar acts of heroism to their credit the following year.
In 2025, these warriors for villas committed 1,835 attacks. And between the start of this year and May 11, they outdid themselves, fulfilling the mitzvah of destruction, theft and intimidation almost 800 times, including more than 100 in the Jordan Valley alone.
During this brief period, 14 Palestinians who were either in their own homes, on their own lands or had gone out to defend them were killed. Of these, 12 were killed by Jewish civilians.
Of the 64 Palestinians killed as part of the mitzvah of expulsion, 26 were from the Ramallah governate and 25 from the Nablus governate. Respectively, the Holy One's divisions in the Ramallah area won first place in the overall competition, with 1,152 attacks. The Nablus area settlers took second place, with 1,028 attacks.
However, every statistic is temporary, and they're all expected to rise. That's because the establishment warmly embraces these holy warriors for real estate. They are continuing a job on which they also worked, but didn't manage to complete.
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