United Nations officials are warning that displacement figures in the West Bank are at their highest levels since 1967 when Israel’s illegal occupation began. This is due to the skyrocketing killings, violence, and property theft against Palestinians perpetrated by the Israeli military alongside illegal settlers concomitant with the genocidal campaign in Gaza.

In January 2025, Tel Aviv launched a brutal war against Palestinians in the northern West Bank, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall.” The war, which has seen the IDF employing many of the tactics they have honed in Gaza, has targeted refugee camps such as Jenin, Far’a, Nur Shams, and Tulkarem.

Iron Wall has been “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s,” Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said four months ago.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva via video from Jordan, Juliette Touma, an UNRWA spokeswoman, admonished this week that “[Iron Wall] is impacting several refugee camps in the area, and it is causing the largest population displacement of the Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967.”

The UN rights office also reiterated that mass forced displacement executed by Israel’s occupation forces could constitute “ethnic cleansing.” Thameen Al-Kheetan, a rights office spokesman, said approximately “30,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced.”

The spokesman explained Israel’s apartheid army has issued demolition orders for roughly 1,400 homes in the northern West Bank alone during the same period. He added that, throughout the West Bank, nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been displaced since October 2023.

Al-Kheetan also noted that Israeli settler attacks have displaced some 2,400 Palestinians, about half of them children, emphasizing that the combined IDF and settler assaults are “emptying large parts of the West Bank of Palestinians.” This “amounts to unlawful transfer,” he said, adding in some cases Israeli actions could be “tantamount to ethnic cleansing” and “[crimes] against humanity.”

Iron Wall has seen massive destruction in the above refugee camps, roads have been widened to make way for Israeli military vehicles by destroying people’s homes, gardens, and other property. As the AP reported in February, “Across the four camps, troops have ripped up roads and destroyed buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines. The Israeli defense minister said [IDF] troops were preparing to stay for a year and would prevent Palestinians from returning.”

The goals of the operation are clear: to turn the West Bank into Gaza. As Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who acts as the de facto occupation governor of the West Bank, said “Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis.”

Smotrich is comparing West Bank cities to cities in Gaza which have been systematically obliterated in Israel’s genocidal campaign, where again top Israeli officials have made the ethnic cleansing motive abundantly clear. He continued, boasting “[West Bank cities] will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries.” In May, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer threatened to annex illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank along with the Jordan Valley.

Since October 2023, the UN has documented that, at the hands of the IDF and illegal settlers, at least 964 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.

Kheetan said there have been 757 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in just the first half of this year, marking an increase of 13% since 2024 during the same period. Nearly 100 Palestinians have been wounded in such attacks this past month alone, he explained this is the highest monthly injury toll of Palestinians from settler violence in more than 20 years.

Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decried Tel Aviv’s role in escalating settler savagery in the West Bank. “[It is] unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are continuous operations organized, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal manner by a large group,” Olmert said during an interview with The Guardian.

The erstwhile Israeli leader then doubled down in his condemnations “There is no way that [violent settler groups such as the Hilltop Youth] can operate in such a consistent, massive and widespread manner without a framework of support and protection which is provided by the [Israeli] authorities.”

As the Washington Post has thoroughly documented, illegal Israeli settlement expansion has been soaring at levels not seen in decades under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule.

Settlers recently beat to death Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet, a young Palestinian man who lived in Florida and held US citizenship.