Illegal Israeli settler attacks have forced around 20 Palestinian families to abandon their homes in the eastern West Bank, a Palestinian rights group said Thursday.
The Bedouin rights group Al-Baidar said the families, from the Kaabneh Bedouin clan, were displaced from the northern section of the Shalal al-Auja Bedouin community, north of Jericho, following a series of repeated assaults by illegal settlers.
Hassan Malihat, the group's general supervisor, said residents were left with no choice but to leave their homes and sources of income, citing growing fear, constant intimidation and the absence of any form of protection.
He said the attacks are part of a broader pattern of forced displacement targeting Bedouin communities across the Jordan Valley, aimed at clearing land for settlement expansion.
Malihat warned that the affected families depend largely on farming and livestock herding, meaning the displacement puts their livelihoods at immediate risk.
"What is happening reflects a systematic policy to uproot indigenous communities," he said, adding that the situation in Shalal al-Auja mirrors similar cases across the valley, where Palestinian civilians face persistent pressure amid weak international protection.
Around 750,000 illegal settlers live in hundreds of settlements across the occupied West Bank, including some 250,000 in occupied East Jerusalem, and rights groups say they carry out near-daily attacks against Palestinians to force them off their land.
The Jordan Valley, under Israeli occupation, has witnessed sustained settler violence against Bedouin communities.
Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 1,103 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, injured nearly 11,000, and detained around 21,000 since October 2023, Palestinian figures showed.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
