There are fears that a widely unnoticed displacement of Bedouin has the aim of fragmenting the territory intended for a future Palestinian state

Israeli settlers are pushing ahead with a largely unnoticed de facto annexation of large areas of rural land in the occupied West Bank that has already seen the almost total displacement of Bedouin in large areas.

While settler activity, including violence, has long been well-documented in the section of the West Bank designated by the 1993 Oslo accords as under Israeli security and administrative control – the so-called Area C of the occupied territory, including the south Hebron Hills – settlers have switched their focus to mostly rural Area B, which was designated to be under Palestinian civil control initially.