West Bank & Jerusalem
Israel emptied a sixty-sixth West Bank community as August's ledger closed
Image credit: Turmus Ayya, occupied West Bank — Wikimedia Commons / Amerhaddad, CC BY-SA 4.0 · License
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Israeli forces demolished every home in Khirbet al-Tabban in Masafer Yatta on Wednesday and displaced its twelve families, seventy people including twenty-eight children. The Israeli rights group B'Tselem counted it as the sixty-sixth Palestinian community Israel has forcibly emptied since 7 October 2023. This is the monthly ledger of that displacement, refreshed for September.
The counts, by who counts#
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on 29 August that Israeli forces and settlers had killed 79 Palestinians in the West Bank since 1 January, nineteen of them children, and injured about 1,870. Settlers were responsible for 23 of the dead and more than 1,040 of the injured. In the fortnight to 24 August OCHA logged 80 settler attacks causing casualties or damage.
Human Rights Watch, in a report published on 20 August, put the displacement since January 2023 at 107 communities fully or partially emptied and about 5,900 people gone, at an average of 6.6 settler attacks a day.
"The Israeli government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it."
Sarah Sanbar, Human Rights Watch, 20 August 2026
The Palestinian Commission against the Wall and Settlements counted 2,030 attacks by forces and settlers in August alone, 1,402 by the army and 628 by settlers, led by Nablus governorate with 380, Ramallah and al-Bireh with 353 and Hebron with 275.
What moved since 8 August#
This ledger launched on 8 August with OCHA's count of ten communities emptied this year. Four weeks on, the entries below are new.
Qusra, Nablus: an outpost went up above Ras al-Ein on 9 August; OCHA recorded three families under severe movement restrictions and a home occupied by soldiers for ten days. Fifteen people remain surrounded on day twenty-five. Police made a first arrest on 3 September.
Al-Mughayyir, Ramallah: soldiers shot dead Khalil Abu Alia, 16, and Omar al-Naasan, 19, on 2 September during a settler incursion the army said began with the return of Israeli livestock. HRW counts nine outposts around the village, seven built since 2023.
Khirbet al-Tabban, Hebron: razed on 2 September inside Firing Zone 918, whose residents lost their High Court case in May 2022.
Jenin governorate: Amnesty International reported on 3 September at least fifteen seizure orders signed in July over some 200 dunams at Qabatiya, Arraba, Mirka, Misilya, Jirba and al-Yamoun, the first such orders inside Area A.
Deir Shams and Hamrush, Hebron: OCHA recorded eleven injured and 240 sheep stolen in one attack and a boy killed in another during the second half of August.
The Israeli military said of al-Mughayyir that troops fired at "key instigators" after cinder blocks and stones were thrown, and of al-Tabban that it enforces against structures "that harm regional security and stability." The next refresh of this ledger falls in the first week of October, at the start of the olive harvest.
