ISRAELI settler violence in the occupied West Bank forcefully displaced nearly 700 Palestinians in January, the highest number since Israel’s invasion of Gaza began in October 2023, the UN reported.

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 694 people were driven from their homes last month, noting settler violence has become “a key driver of forced displacement.”

January’s high figure included the entire herding community of Ras Ein al‑Auja, where 130 families left after months of harassment.

OCHA said this marked the “highest single‑community displacement due to settler attacks and access restrictions over the past three years.”

Settlers, often with military backing, use violence and harassment to establish a presence on Palestinian agricultural land and deny access, according to Israeli NGO Peace Now.

Today, settlers assaulted residents in the Bedouin community of Shakara, south of Nablus, at dawn as they were in their own homes.

West Bank Protection Consortium director Allegra Pacheco told AFP: “No-one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this, and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this.

“All eyes are focused on Gaza when it comes to Palestine, while we have an ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and nobody’s paying attention.”

In January, a further 182 Palestinians were displaced by Israeli demolitions of structures it claims lack permits.

The West Bank is home to more than 500,000 illegal Israeli settlers and three million Palestinians.