A/HRC/25/67 27. A small minority within the ideologically motivated settlers has been responsible for most of the violence committed against Palestinian men, women and children and against their homes and properties. In the first 10 months of 2013, 361 incidents of settler violence were reported, including 87 resulting in the injury of Palestinians (compared to a total of 366 incidents in 2012).29 Most of these incidents occurred in the Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron governorates. Settler violence is reinforced by a lack of accountability and the related failure of Israeli law enforcement forces to protect vulnerable Palestinian communities (A/68/513, paras. 42-52). 28. Housing demolitions and displacement of Palestinian communities also kept up with the settlement boom in 2013. From January to October 2013, 533 Palestinian homes and livelihood structures were demolished, including 205 residential structures, displacing 969 people, including 441 children. International donor-funded structures, paid for by taxpayers around the world, were not spared from demolition, and 96 donor-funded structures, including residential, livestock-related and water and sanitation facilities in the West Bank were demolished by Israeli authorities. 29. Herding communities living in small villages in Area C have been particularly vulnerable to these Israeli practices. In 2013, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights twice spoke out against the demolition of at least three Bedouin and herder communities in the northern Jordan Valley.30 Violations by Israel of international law extend to actively preventing the provision of urgent humanitarian assistance from the international community to the affected Palestinian communities.31 The future of outposts 30. In July 2012, the Government-appointed committee to examine the state of construction in the West Bank, chaired by Supreme Court Justice (Ret.) Edmund Levy (the Levy Committee), issued its report on the legal status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, in particular, set forth recommended steps to regularize the construction of “illegal settlements” (outposts) in the West Bank (currently numbering over 100). It concluded that the international laws of occupation, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, did not apply to Israel’s unique situation in Judea and Samaria (the name given the West Bank in internal Israeli discourse and signalling a claimed biblical attachment), and that Israelis had the legal right to settle in the West Bank despite the international consensus. 31. The conclusions of the Levy Committee not only reflected disregard of international law but also set forth a quasi-legal retroactive endorsement of outposts, formally unauthorized under Israeli law. In fact, the Committee determined that existing outposts were “carried out with the knowledge, encouragement and tacit agreement of the most senior political level, government ministers and the Prime Minister, and therefore such conduct is to be seen as implied agreement”.32 A previous report of 2005 by Talia Sasson, a former Chief State Prosecutor, concerning the illegal outposts had not gone so far as to implicate the senior-most political echelon of the country, but had found the World Zionist Organization (fully funded from the State Treasury), the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria, and the Assistant to the Defense Minister complicit in the establishment of new unauthorized outposts, and exposed an 29 30 31 32 10 See www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_the_humanitarian_monitor_2013_11_25_english.pdf. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13662&LangID=E and www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13786&LangID=E. www.ochaopt.org/documents/unhc_obstriction_humanitarian_assistance_english.pdf. See http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/D9D07DCF58E781C585257A3A005956A6.