RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories – Amnesty International accused Israel on June 10 of conducting an “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank, saying the measures were designed to accelerate the annexation of the Palestinian territory.
A new report by the rights group found that these rural Palestinian communities are bearing the brunt of Israeli settler violence and forced displacement.
“Israeli authorities are accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities” of the West Bank, said the report released on June 10.
Amnesty said its research showed that 27 Bedouin and herding communities comprising hundreds of Palestinians were forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or were at risk of displacement in the West Bank’s Area C, which encompasses 60 per cent of the territory and is under Israeli control under the 1990s Oslo agreements.
In the report titled “Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities”, Amnesty accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, one of Israel’s most right-wing to date, of catering to the settler movement’s religious nationalist agenda.
“It has accelerated settlement expansion and land grabs, increased financial and logistical support to settlements, and it has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence,” the report said.
In an apparent effort to counter arguments by Israeli officials that settler violence is caused by bad actors in that community, Amnesty pointed to “explicit calls by Israeli officials for settlement expansion” and “measures aimed at minimising Palestinian presence in Area C”.
The “ethnic cleansing campaign is state-led, and state-sponsored, not driven by rogue settlers or so-called extremist ministers”, the report concluded.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement, is a vocal proponent of West Bank’s annexation and on June 9 was banned from France for actively promoting it.
In May 2026, the UN rights office had also decried indications of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and the West Bank.
Amnesty pointed to Israel’s legal responsibilities as an occupying power in the West Bank, and its violations of international humanitarian law.
“These violations include the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer and the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer of population,” the report said.
Bedouin and herders’ communities, often isolated and without security services, are particularly vulnerable to the threat of violence or displacement.
Since 2023, AFP reporters have witnessed the departure of several Bedouin communities of the West Bank under pressure from settler groups, including the community of Ras Ein al-Auja in early 2026.
“What is happening today is the complete collapse of the community as a result of the settlers’ continuous and repeated attacks,” Farhan Jahaleen, a Bedouin from the village, told AFP in January.
Since Netanyahu’s government came to power in late 2022, it has greenlighted the creation of 102 settlements in the West Bank, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now.
Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, among some three million Palestinians.
All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Some settlers have engaged in arson, vandalism, theft of private property in Palestinian communities, as well as physical assaults and sometimes murder, according to rights groups.
The number of such incidents steadily increased after the start of the war in Gaza in 2023, reaching an average of six per day in the West Bank in 2026, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. AFP