By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

The UN reports record-high settler violence and fatalities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2024.

The past year has seen the “highest number” of illegal Israeli settler-related incidents in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday.

It’s Saturday morning in Khirbet Susiya, in the South Hebron Hills, and Hussein and Wissam Nawaj'ah are sitting down to breakfast.

Suddenly, a group of teenage Israeli settlers enters the village, their faces covered.

Watch footage of the settlers attacking homes and… pic.twitter.com/PVU8g78UOY

— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) December 31, 2024

It said, “2024 has seen the highest number of settler-related incidents across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the office began keeping records almost two decades ago.”

“About 1,400 such incidents – including physical assaults, arson attacks, raids on Palestinian communities and the destruction of fruit trees – have resulted in Palestinian casualties, damage to property, or both,” stated the OCHA. “This is nearly four incidents per day.”

Second Highest Fatality Rate

Of the 4,700 people internally displaced across the West Bank in the past year, “about 560, or 12 per cent,” have cited settler violence and access restrictions as the main reasons that forced them out of their homes or communities, the UN office noted.

The year 2024 “has also marked the second highest number of Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank since OCHA’s records began, following 2023 which was the highest.”

TRT World’s award-winning documentary “Holy Redemption: Stealing Palestinian Land” exposes how the sick mentality of illegal Zionist settlers is used against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank pic.twitter.com/6kNCjMlSoo

— TRT World (@trtworld) September 18, 2024

More than 480 Palestinians, including 91 children, have been killed across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the OCHA.

“Most of them were killed by Israeli forces. Palestinians from the West Bank killed 35 Israelis, including three children, either in the West Bank or in Israel,” it noted.

‘War-Like Tactics’

While at least 14 Palestinians were killed in “intra-Palestinian violence involving Palestinian forces.”

Over 3,000 Palestinians and more than 150 Israelis were injured in the West Bank, the UN office stated.

It pointed out that the Israeli army operations in 2023 and 2024 in the West Bank “have involved airstrikes and other war-like tactics that seems to exceed the means of standard law enforcement.”

‘Great Opportunity’ for Permanent War: What if Israel Annexed the West Bank?

Under international law, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered “occupied territories” and all Jewish settlement-building activity there is illegal.

In a landmark advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice declared in July last year that Israel’s ongoing decades-long occupation of Palestinian land was “unlawful ” and should be brought to an end “as rapidly as possible.”

(The Palestine Chronicle)