West Bank ethnic cleansing, settler attacks Israel’s state policy: Amnesty

Published 10 June 2026 · politics

Israel is using war crimes and crimes against humanity to ‘accelerate’ its ‘annexation agenda and settlement expansion’, according to the global rights group. The displacement

Israel is using war crimes and crimes against humanity to ‘accelerate’ its ‘annexation agenda and settlement expansion’, according to the global rights group. 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, according to global rights group Amnesty International. The release of Amnesty’s new report comes on Wednesday as the Israeli government has approved record levels of illegal settlement expansion and annexation of large parts of the West Bank in recent months. “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,” read the report. Israeli settler attacks particularly affect Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in the West Bank. At least 117 villages in the West Bank have been subject to either complete or partial displacement due to settler attacks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

This resulted in about 5,910 people being “forced to leave their homes” between January 2023 and December 2025, according to the Amnesty International report. 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”, continued the report. 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 settlers soon began a sustained campaign of violent attacks and threats against Zanuta’s residents,” continued the report, adding 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 says that while the village’s residents “repeatedly reported settler attacks to the Israeli police … no action was ever taken”.

Supreme Court order ignored 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. In April last year, far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock distributed a range of weapons, including all-terrain vehicles, to settlers living in the Hebron area during an event at Meitarim Farm. “The heroic and pioneering settlers who live here are doing Zionism, and they need security … We are here to build with them and to settle the land,” said Smotrich, who also praised settler land seizures. “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,” read Amnesty International’s report.