Amnesty accuses Israel of state-led ethnic cleansing in West Bank

Amnesty International has accused Israel of running a state-led campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in Area C of the occupied West Bank, saying the pressure is meant to clear land for annexation. The London-based rights group said the pattern is not just the work of rogue settlers, but part of an organized policy that has accelerated under Israel’s current government.

In a report covering the past three and a half years, Amnesty said 27 Bedouin and herding communities, made up of hundreds of Palestinians, were either forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or faced imminent displacement. The group said the campaign has intensified alongside the war in Gaza and that international inaction has helped embolden Israeli authorities. It tied the findings to long-running disputes over Bedouin communities near Jerusalem, including Khan al-Ahmar, which has faced demolition and transfer threats for years.

The scale of displacement described by Amnesty aligns with wider United Nations humanitarian reporting on violence and access restrictions in the West Bank. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that since January 2023, 116 West Bank communities have experienced full or partial displacement, largely in Bedouin and herding areas in Area C. It said 45 Palestinian communities were fully displaced in that period, including nine in 2026. OCHA also recorded about 1,400 settler incidents across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 2024, with roughly 4,250 Palestinians displaced and 1,760 structures destroyed. October 2025 saw the highest monthly number of settler attacks since OCHA began documenting them in 2006.

The legal stakes are significant. Amnesty says the conduct amounts to unlawful transfer and ethnic cleansing, allegations that would carry serious weight under international humanitarian law if sustained in court or by investigators. United Nations human rights bodies have said the unlawful transfer of protected people is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that Bedouin communities face a heightened risk of displacement.

Israeli authorities rejected Amnesty’s accusation, with the Israel Defense Forces disputing its framing. The report lands at a moment of renewed debate over annexation, settlement expansion and the obligations of allied governments that continue trade, cooperation and investment with Israel. Amnesty said those states should halt measures that facilitate unlawful occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and impose sanctions on officials implicated in the campaign.