Seizing Land Through Terror… A Nakba Repeating Silently in the Heart of the West Bank
10/3/2026 – Union for Justice Foundation
Recently, a fierce wave of systematic forcible displacement targeting the Palestinian presence in the pastoral and eastern areas of the West Bank has been escalating. Since the beginning of the year, the Union for Justice Foundation has documented a new and harsh chapter of the ongoing Palestinian exile. What happened in the communities of Shalal Al-Auja, Abu Najah, and Al-Shakara is not merely a passing displacement, but rather the direct result of a policy of “field terror” practiced by settler militias under the full cover of the occupation forces, with the aim of emptying the land of its original inhabitants and transforming it into vital spaces for expansionist settlement projects.
In the Jordan Valley region, which represents the food basket and the strategic depth of Palestine, the chapters of the tragedy were completed in the Shalal Al-Auja community, where approximately one hundred and twenty Palestinian families were forced to depart forcibly and leave their dwellings and their history behind them. This mass displacement did not come out of nowhere, but was the result of years of suffocating siege and daily attacks carried out by settlers, beginning with poisoning livestock and burning crops and reaching direct threats of killing, which made remaining on that land an unequal battle between bare chests and militias armed with weapons and hatred. The complete emptying of Shalal Al-Auja represents a stab in the side of the Palestinian presence and opens the door wide for the confiscation of thousands of dunams that these families had protected through their legendary steadfastness.
The areas northeast of Ramallah were not spared from this criminal scheme, as the treacherous hand of settlement expansion extended to reach the Abu Najah community near the village of Al-Mughayyir, where forty other Palestinian families were forced to pack their belongings and depart forcibly from their land and pastures. The continuous settler attacks, which included assaulting tents during the night hours and terrorizing children and women, created a tragic reality that compelled these families to make the bitter decision to leave in order to protect the lives of their children, in the absence of any international or legal protection that could restrain these unrestrained militias that have come to control the fate of the residents and their daily sustenance.
Within the same context of systematic brutality, the Al-Shakara community east of the town of Duma witnessed a complete forced displacement affecting thirteen families, after heroic steadfastness that lasted for years in the face of the machinery of demolition and intimidation. The residents of Al-Shakara were subjected to the harshest forms of field pressure, including the burning of homes and their demolition, threats with weapons, the destruction of personal property, and poultry farms, which forced the families to abandon their memories and their vast agricultural lands. What happened in Al-Shakara is a mirror of what is happening throughout the West Bank, where everything Palestinian is being targeted to uproot it from its roots, within a clearly defined plan aimed at permanently changing the demographic and geographic reality.
We at the Union for Justice Foundation sound the alarm and affirm that the displacement of more than one hundred and seventy families from these three communities since the beginning of the year constitutes a fully-fledged war crime under international conventions. These systematic attacks led by settlers are not isolated incidents, but rather an executive instrument of an official policy aimed at ethnically cleansing the land.
The international silence regarding these crimes is what grants the killers and settlers the audacity to continue destroying Palestinian villages and communities one after another. The steadfastness of these residents in confronting bullets and fire for many years is a badge of honor, and our duty today is to raise their voice loudly, document their grievance, and guarantee their right to return to their land from which they were displaced under the weight of terror and injustice.
The Union for Justice Foundation affirms that these displacement operations constitute “forcible transfer” under the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 49), which categorically prohibits the occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into the territories it occupies, or deporting or transferring all or part of the population of the occupied territories forcibly. Since these communities were forced to depart as a result of a “coercive environment” created by settler attacks (which take place under the protection or acquiescence of the occupation authority), this legally falls under war crimes in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
End.
