Israel Aims To Bring 'Permanent Demographic Change' To West Bank, Gaza: UN

RunWithRugs · 2026-02-27T12:08:50+00:00

UN rights chief Volker Turk stated Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza aim to create "permanent demographic change," raising concerns of ethnic cleansing. Displacement and settlement expansion have intensified, leading to significant humanitarian crises.

RunWithRugs

2026-02-27 12:08:50

Abstract generation in progress

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip seem aimed at creating “permanent demographic change”, UN rights chief Volker Turk said Thursday.

“Taken together, Israel’s actions appear aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza and the West Bank, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing”, Turk said in a speech before the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Turk pointed in particular to an ongoing, year-long Israeli military operation in the West Bank’s north that has caused the displacement of 32,000 Palestinians.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, entire Bedouin herder communities have been displaced by increasing harassment and violence from Israeli settlers, including near Mikhmas to the east of Ramallah, and Ras Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the year.

In addition to roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

Israel has approved a series of initiatives this month backed by far-right ministers, including launching a process to register land in the West Bank as “state property” and allowing Israelis to purchase land there directly, in a move condemned by several countries.

Israel’s current government has accelerated settlement expansion, approving a record 54 settlements in 2025, according to Israeli settlement watchdog NGO Peace Now.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

In the Gaza Strip, most of the territory’s 2.2mn inhabitants have been displaced at least once since the start of the Hamas-Israel war.

“Intensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighbourhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza”, the UN human rights office said in a report last week.

“They want maximum land and minimum Arabs”, Fathi Nimer, a researcher with Palestinian think-tank Al-Shabaka, told AFP, referring to a commonly used phrase used to describe Israeli settlement tactics.

West Bank Gaza Strip permanent demographic change

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