News - Middle East: A report says that more than 125,000 Israeli settlers moved abroad between early 2022 and mid-2024, marking the largest-ever loss of human capital in such a short period.

According to a report presented on Monday to the Immigration and Absorption Committee of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset), Israel’s net migration balance of settlers — the number of settlers leaving without intending to come back, minus the number of long-term returnees — decreased by 125,200 people between early 2022 and August 2024.

The report noted that the rise in the number of those leaving permanently during the years may have been influenced by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The trend is believed to have persisted into 2025, as the war on Gaza continued.

“This is not a wave of emigration, it’s a tsunami of Israelis choosing to leave the country,” said committee chairman MK Gilad Kariv.

According to the report compiled by the Knesset Research and Information Center, some 59,400 Israelis left in 2022, and an all-time high 82,800 departed in 2023. In the first eight months of 2024, approximately 50,000 people left, the report said.

That’s while the average number of long-term emigrants between 2009 and 2021 was nearly 40,500 per year.

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, killing nearly 70,000 Palestinians before the war came to an end earlier this month with a fragile ceasefire agreement.

Source: Press TV