In a serious escalation of the Israeli settlers violence targeted towards the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, Israeli settlers carried out the bulldozing of approximately 150 dunums of agricultural lands on the morning of Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in the area of Khillet al-Qutn, south of Bethlehem [1], which belongs to a Palestinian family [2].
This is not the first time that lands in Khillet al-Qutn have come under attack. The area has previously witnessed similar assaults in what appears to be a deliberate strategy to displace its residents and landowners and expand colonial control over the territory.
This violation affirms that this is not an isolated event but part of a broader, systematic settlement plan aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinian residents by undermining their primary means of livelihood—land. Through systematic and rising settler violence and terror in the West Bank, Israel is posing a direct threat not only to Palestinian existence but also to their economic survival and environmental resources.
Such attacks constitute compounded violations: they devastate agricultural lands and displace families who rely on them as a main source of income, all while taking place with total impunity. Such impunity is precisely what enables these violations to continue and escalate further, both in geographic scope and scale.
The targeting of agricultural lands, essential to the livelihood of Palestinian families, and the forced displacement of civilians as is the case of Khillet al-Qutn, constitute grave violations under international humanitarian and human rights law, exacerbated in a context of the policy of annexation, which is strictly prohibited under international law.
[1] “مستعمرون يشرعون بتجريف أراضٍ جنوب بيت لحم.” PNN, 9 April 2025.
[2] “9أيلول،2025: مستعمرون يشرعون بتجريف أراضٍ جنوب بيت لحم.” Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission, 9 April 2025.