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

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.