Israel has announced it will reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in the next few days as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. However, the border will only open in one direction: for Palestinians to exit. Israeli American human rights lawyer Sari Bashi says the move validates fears that Israel’s goal is to “continue the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.” This comes as a coalition of 12 Israeli human rights groups concluded in a new report that 2025 is the deadliest and most destructive year for Palestinians since 1967. Last week, the United Nations reported more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, 2023. Violence in the West Bank and Gaza is “directed toward getting Palestinians to leave,” says Bashi.

So, we just finished the olive harvest season. It’s a very important cultural and also economic event for Palestinians. And this year it was particularly violent, with Israeli settlers coming, attacking people as they try to harvest, cutting down and burning down trees, intimidating people. And there have been cases even where Israeli Jewish activists came to be a protective force by accompanying Palestinian harvesters, and they, too, were attacked and even taken to the hospital with injuries. It is much more dangerous to be a Palestinian than to be an Israeli Jew in the West Bank, but the fact that settlers are also attacking Jews is an indication of just how violent, messianic and ultranationalistic this movement has become.