Amnesty International released a report on June 10, 2026, accusing Israel of conducting a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing against Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, especially in Area C, which covers over 60% of the territory under Israeli control [1, 2, 3]. The report said Israeli authorities have accelerated settlement expansion, land seizures, and settler violence while supporting and arming settler groups as part of a coordinated state policy to annex Area C [1, 3].
Between January 2023 and April 2026, at least 117 mainly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities faced full or partial forced displacement due to settler violence and Israeli policies, according to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cited by Amnesty [2, 3]. Approximately 5,910 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in this period [2, 3].
Amnesty’s report said Israeli authorities ignored orders by the Israeli Supreme Court issued in July 2024 and February 2025 to act against settler violence. Palestinian villages have been left unprotected while settlers repeatedly attacked them by breaking into homes, emptying water tanks, and pumping sewage onto farmland [2]. Between 2023 and 2026, Israel established 363 new settlement outposts and demolished 3,407 Palestinian homes and structures in the West Bank [3].
Attorney Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General, said, "Over the past three and a half years Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities." The report emphasized the 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" [2, 3].
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has backed the settlement expansion efforts. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a vocal supporter of West Bank annexation, was banned from France in June 2026 over his promotion of annexation policies [1].
The report concluded the ethnic cleansing effort is deliberate, state-led, and state-sponsored, rather than driven by isolated extremist actors or ministers [1, 2, 3].
