The U.N. human rights office has expressed concerns about possible “ethnic cleansing,” warning of an acceleration of Israeli settlements and displacements of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. A report from the office of Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, covers a yearlong period through the end of October and warns of expanded settlements in large parts of the West Bank and the forced displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians. The office's chief for the occupied Palestinian territory said that since then, “the pace of the concerted efforts by the Israeli government to seize as much Palestinian land as possible ... is only becoming more relentless.”
