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06/10/2026 June 10, 2026 Amnesty accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' in West Bank Amnesty International has accused Israel of conducting "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinian Bedouins
06/10/2026 June 10, 2026 Amnesty accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' in West Bank Amnesty International has accused Israel of conducting "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank. In a report released on Wednesday, the rights group said that 27 Bedouin and herding communities were forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or were at risk of displacement in Area C of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is under full Israeli control under the 1990s Oslo agreements.
"Israeli authorities are accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities," Amnesty said in a statement. It pointed to land grabs, financial support to settlements, and the arming of settlers, "thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence." Amnesty also refuted arguments by Israeli officials who say settler violence is caused by bad actors in that community.
The rights group said the "ethnic cleansing campaign is state-led, and state-, not driven by rogue settlers or so-called extremist ministers." The Israeli government did not immediately respond to the report. It has long rejected previous accusations of ethnic cleansing. Amnesty Secretary General Agnes Callamard launched the report in Berlin, where she said Germany and other European countries had
"enabled Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing." She said that Europe's targeted sanctions against extremist individuals were symbolically important but had "no impact on the rate of settlement expansion" or on "the scale of settlers' violence." "The EU in particular, must leverage its influence by expediting the long-overdue suspension of its association agreement with Israel," Callamard told reporters in Berlin.
The BriefWire