Amnesty International has accused Israel of carrying out a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank with the intention to annex the Palestinian territory.
The accusation came in a new, 149-page report alleging that the forced displacement of West Bank Palestinians resulted from a concerted state policy. The release of Amnesty’s new report comes as the Israeli government has approved record levels of illegal settlement expansion and annexation of large parts of the West Bank in recent months.
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved the establishment of 34 illegal settlements in the West Bank in April, the largest number of settlements approved in a single cabinet session. This brings the total number of illegal settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since it came to power in late 2022 to 103.
According to global rights group Amnesty International, the displacement of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank forms part of a deliberate Israeli government strategy of ethnic cleansing rather than the actions of a few “rogue” settlers or far-right government Ministers.
“The [displacement] campaign is not the product of ‘rogue’ settlers, settlers’ organizations or ‘extremist’ government ministers … settler violence is not an aberration but an integral part of an organized state policy.”
Amnesty International’s report
Israeli settler attacks particularly affect Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in the West Bank. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 117 villages in the West Bank have been subject to either complete or partial displacement due to settler attacks.
The Amnesty International report said that this resulted in about 5,910 people being “forced to leave their homes” between January 2023 and December 2025. It added that most of the affected villages were “designated as part of Area C under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, placing [them] under full Israeli military and administrative control.”
Area C comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank. For instance, just one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the village of Zanuta, where Palestinian Bedouins have lived for generations, “Israeli settlers established an illegal outpost known as Meitarim Farm in 2021,” said the report.
The report added that “The settlers soon began a sustained campaign of violent attacks and threats against Zanuta’s residents,” stating that the attacks included settlers breaking into the homes of residents to attack them and emptying “their water tanks and pumping sewage onto their farmland.” The report said that while the village’s residents “repeatedly reported settler attacks to the Israeli police … no action was ever taken.”
In July 2024 and February 2025, Israel’s Supreme Court then ordered the police and military to facilitate residents’ return to their village and protect them from settler attacks. “The Israeli police and military ignored both rulings [and] every attempt by residents to return was met with continued settler violence and the acquiescence of Israeli forces,” the report said. Instead of calls for restraint, the settlers “received state backing to intensify their violent campaign”, it added
“The ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven and state-implemented; it seeks to accelerate the Israeli government’s annexation agenda and settlement expansion through war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Amnesty International’s report.
Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty, iterated that these abuses “are not the result of a few ‘bad apples.’”
“Settler violence is a core component of a state-sanctioned campaign of ethnic cleansing. What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”
Agnès Callamard
International Community Urged To Prevent West Bank Annexation
Moreover, the rights group called on the international community to “prevent the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank.”
The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal. Israel, meanwhile, views the West Bank as disputed territory and says its final status is subject to negotiations.
Israel has in the past denounced such accusations — including allegations of “ethnic cleansing,” a term referring to forced expulsions of population by violence, as reflecting longtime unfair bias.
Israeli leaders have condemned particularly grave violence by Jewish settlers but tend to denounce them as exceptions. Key Cabinet Ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government are pushing for a formal annexation of the territory, and officials have voiced support for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
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