Passengers are seen at Ben Gurion International Airport, southeast of Tel Aviv, the Israeli-occupied territories, on April 4, 2024. (Photo via social media)

Tel Aviv, October 14 (RHC)-- Latest figures have revealed a sharp increase in the immigration of Israeli settlers from occupied territories abroad since the start of the Tel Aviv regime’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip in early October last year.

The Hebrew-language Maariv newspaper reported that the first seven months of the current year witnessed the immigration of 40,000 settlers, equivalent to three times the immigration rates before the brutal aggression, as 2,000 more people immigrate monthly than in previous years.

Moreover, nearly one million settlers have obtained foreign passports in recent years as an insurance policy in the event of a full-blown war.

Regarding financial transfers abroad, Maariv reported that Israeli settlers transferred $7 billion abroad in deposits during the first seven months.  The newspaper also described this as a “brain drain”, as the immigrants included doctors, scientists, pharmacists and high-tech experts.

Last month, data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) indicated a dramatic rise in the number of Israeli settlers leaving the occupied lands permanently in 2022 and in the first half of 2023.

According to the figures cited by Channel 13, some 31,000 Israelis were declared as having immigrated in 2021, meaning they left a year earlier (compared to 29,000 who returned), 38,000 were declared as such in 2022 (with 23,000 returning), while 55,300 were determined in 2023 to have moved abroad (27,000 returned), marking a jump of over 50 percent.  Some 40,400 Israeli settlers are said to have left the occupied territories, according to the report.

In July, Channel 12 cited CBS data as showing that the number of Israeli settlers who permanently left occupied lands spiked after the surprise and large-scale Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas and other Gaza-based resistance groups on October 7 last year and the ensuing outbreak of war on Gaza.