UN rapporteur says Israel is outsourcing coercion to settlers

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israel has “outsourced coercion to the settlers” in the occupied West Bank and is using them to push Palestinians off their land. She described the campaign as a crime whose perpetrators should be investigated and prosecuted.

Her assessment came as settlers pitched tents on Sunday for a new outpost in the Wadi Zeytun area beside the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, and began a second one at the neighbouring village of Burqa.

Umm Safa has lost 4,700 of its 4,800 dunams to settlement expansion, and Burqa 10,000 of its 12,000. Should both new sites hold, 6 outposts will ring the two villages.

That ring is the point of the method. An outpost begins as canvas and a generator, and what follows is a road, a fence and a patrol, until the land between the tents becomes a space Palestinian farmers cannot cross to reach what is still legally theirs.

The pressure is not abstract for those living inside it. In Qusra, south of Nablus, a settler siege of three families entered a second week with 15 people confined to their homes, among them 2 children, until municipal crews restored their water and electricity. At Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, settlers attacked a house and Israeli forces arrested 9 of its residents, while the Palestinian Red Crescent was kept out of the area and an ambulance's keys were taken.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, put the current rate at about 30 settler attacks a day and called the situation extremely dangerous.