THREE months ago, Bushra Khalidi received a call from her mother saying that Israeli settlers had forcibly entered their family home in East Jerusalem.
The Oxfam spokesperson was at an event in New York which, ironically, was about compliance and international humanitarian law in Palestine.
“[The settlers] claimed they had purchased the property,” she said, explaining that the family are now in an ongoing court case – with the settlers presenting “forged papers”.
“We [Palestinians] are all impacted,” Khalidi added.
“This is just one story among the thousands.”
The West Bank – a Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since – has been described at the second front of the war in Gaza.
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And as Israel carries out a devastating war on Gaza, extremist settlers are exploiting the lack of global attention on the territory to expel Palestinians from their land – often aided and funded by the Israeli government.
It’s one of many brutal realities for the three million Palestinians who live there.
Since the outbreak of the war, the UN has documented around 1270 attacks by settlers against Palestinian civilians, while Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said Palestinians have been forced out of at least 18 villages At least 652 Palestinians in the West Bank have also been killed by Israeli fire since the war in Gaza. According to the UN, 11 have been killed by settlers, at least.
This week, for example, a 40-year-old Palestinian man was reportedly shot dead after settlers and Israeli soldiers entered Wadi al-Rahhel, near Bethlehem.
On top of her family home, Khalidi fears that her current property in Ramallah, which is just under an Israeli settlement, will also be seized.
"I just have these visions of hordes of settlers coming onto our land and destroying our solar panels and destroying our home," she said.
"I really feel like it's at fingers reach."
This second front in the war on Gaza is also set to expand as Israel has launched a large-scale military operation in the West Bank today, with its forces killing 10 Palestinian militants and sealing off the city of Jenin.
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Israel's foreign minister Yisrael Katz has also called for a "temporary evacuation" – sparking fears it could lead to a mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
Khalidi heard news of the strikes in Jenin and the incursion at 6am today, just as she woke up.
But the aid worker said that she doesn’t believe that there will be the same kind of ground incursion as the one seen in Gaza.
“There are Israeli settlements meters away from Palestinian towns and villages and city centers,” she said.
But Khalidi added that it’s part of a new more aggressive tactic used by Israel in the territory since the start of the war.
“It's all tied to the same policies of forcible displacement and collective punishment, destroying civilian infrastructure and making life so unlivable and impossible that you have to leave.”
The similarities also stretch to the provision of aid, she said.
“Our [Oxfam’s] access is completely impeded in the same way that it is in Gaza.
“And I think it's extremely important to make those links because it's the same government. The scale of it is different but the policies are very similar.”
Khalidi’s biggest fear is that third-party states – the United Kingdom included – will not “uphold their legal obligations under international law to protect the civilian population in Palestine”.
She added that this has to go beyond “words of condemnation” and “actually take action”.
“Ten months, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.”
“[And] we are not seeing accountability come to fruition in any way whatsoever.
“We're just seeing Israel continue in its military campaigns across the territory and it has to stop.”
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