LONDON: Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have forced about 150 Palestinians from their village through a violent five-day campaign carried out under the protection of Israeli authorities.

Last weekend, the settler group had constructed an illegal outpost close to a Palestinian home in Mughayyir Al-Deir, east of Ramallah, The Guardian reported.

The village is home to shepherds and farmers, and by Friday this week dozens of villagers had moved their flocks away and had gathered their belongings to leave the area.

“Settlers stalked between Palestinian men who worked fast and largely in silence, grappling with the grim reality of leaving the place where most were born and grew up,” The Guardian reported. “A child cried as he was driven away on a truck loaded with the family’s red sofas.”

Israeli settlers belonging to the extremist group Hilltop Youth celebrated as Palestinian families left the village.

The group’s unofficial spokesperson, Elisha Yered, said: “This is what redemption looks like! This is a relatively large outpost that contained about 150 people from the enemy population, but it was broken.”

Several of the settlers involved in the illegal campaign, including Yered, are subject to UK and EU sanctions.

Yered was “part of a group of armed settlers” that carried out an attack in 2023 that killed Qusai Jammal Mi’tan, a 19-year-old Palestinian, sanctions files show.

Neria Ben Pazi and Zohar Sabah, two Israeli settlers under British sanctions, visited the illegal outpost at Mughayyir Al-Deir this week.

The hills surrounding the village are dotted with the ruins of other abandoned Palestinian homes, as settlers have waged a campaign to clear the area of locals.

In Mughayyir Al-Deir, Israeli police and military personnel stood guard and patrolled as the settlers began to build the outpost.

Zvi Sukkot, a far-right MP who said on TV last week that Israel “can kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody in the world cares,” visited the village to support the settlers.

A Palestinian family from Mughayyir Al-Deir filed a petition in Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday.

They demanded an injunction and urgent hearing on the settler campaign, and asked why Israeli authorities had failed to intervene over the illegal outpost and evictions.

Many of the Palestinian families forced to leave the village had relatives who were forced to leave Beersheba during the Nakba in 1948, when some 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland.

An Israeli military spokesperson said troops worked “to ensure the security of the state of Israel and Judea and Samaria (Israel’s name for the occupied West Bank).” The military will respond to the Palestinian family’s petition in court, the spokesperson said.

A hearing is scheduled for next week, but all Palestinian families will have left Mughayyir Al-Deir by then.

LONDON: The UK government is under pressure from senior Labour figures to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Ahead of a UN conference on a two-state solution in New York next month, Labour peer and Holocaust survivor Lord Dubs said such a move would strengthen the Palestinians’ hand in future peace talks with Israel, and would give them “self-respect.”

He told The Guardian: “Even if it doesn’t lead to anything immediately, it would still give Palestinians a better standing.”

Lord Hain, a former government minister, said “delaying recognition until negotiations are concluded simply allows Israel’s illegal occupation to become permanent,” and recognition should be “a catalyst, not a consequence” of peace negotiations.

The UN conference could see both the UK and France formally recognize a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, which is co-chairing the conference with France, urged countries to view Palestinian statehood as “a precondition for peace, and not its product.”

France and Saudi Arabia say the aim of the conference is not “to ‘revive’ or to ‘relaunch’ another endless process, but to implement, once and for all, the two-state solution.”

They have asked participants “to highlight the actions they are willing to undertake, individually or collectively, in fulfilment of their obligations and in support of the international consensus on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and the two-state solution.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has previously hinted that his government would join the 147 states that already recognize Palestine.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that discussions are underway with French counterparts over recognition, but that Britain is angling for more than just a symbolic gesture at the conference.

Earlier in May, 69 Labour politicians — including a number of government ministers — signed a letter drafted by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to recognize Palestine, in what they called a “unique window of opportunity.”

Labour MP Alex Ballinger, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: “We can no longer speak in platitudes about two states while blocking the very steps that could help make one of them real.”

Afzal Khan, a former Labour shadow minister, said: “Recognition would now be a positive first step towards securing a peaceful two-state solution, end unlawful settlement expansions and blockades, and unlock the diplomatic and humanitarian pathways to lasting justice.”