Both in Area C and throughout East Jerusalem, house demolitions and the expulsion of the native population is a slow but steady ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. More than 173,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) since 1947. In 2023 alone, more than 1,395 structures were demolished and 1,537 people were displaced in the West Bank, with another 66,136 people directly affected. In 2022, 2,845 structures were demolished in the Naqab, including 771 homes, mainly of Palestinian Bedouin population. In Jerusalem, between 1967 and 1996, the occupation authorities revoked the residency status of Jerusalem Palestinians living outside the borders of “Israel” (abroad or in the West Bank or Gaza Strip) for seven or more years, to maintain its so-called “demographic balance” (limiting the Palestinian residents to 30% or less of the city’s total population).5
In the West Bank, about 200 farming-shepherding communities throughout Area C of the West Bank 6 are deprived of quality infrastructure and public services, especially in the field of education. the weaponization of the right to education of Bedouin communities living in ‘Area C’, is another Zionist tool for forcible displacement. 7
In Gaza, 70% of the population are refugees from the 1948 Nakba and since the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007, they have suffered 5 massacres and an ongoing genocide with thousands of civilian infrastructure destroyed, including residences. From October 2023 to the present Israel is carrying out a genocide with more than 30,000 people killed and the displacement of more than 2 million people from their homes, with the destruction of all infrastructure, including roads, hospitals and schools displacing 1.5 million people south of the Strip.
