According to a new report by Amnesty International, the forced displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank is not the work of a handful of “rogue” settlers or far-right ministers, but a deliberate strategy by the Israeli government to carry out ethnic cleansing.
The report, released Wednesday, comes as the Israeli government in recent months has approved a record number of illegal settlements and annexed large parts of the West Bank. “The campaign (of displacement) is not the product of ‘rogue’ settlers, settlement organizations, or extremist ministers… settler violence is not an anomaly but an integral part of organized state policy,” the report states.
The attacks by Israeli settlers have particularly affected the Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities in the West Bank. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 117 villages in the West Bank have been wholly or partially displaced due to settler attacks. The Amnesty report says this has led to around 5,910 people being “forced to flee their homes” between January 2023 and December 2025.
Most of the affected villages are “designated as part of Area C under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, placing (them) under full Israeli administrative and military control.” Area C covers more than 60% of the West Bank. A prime example is the village of Zanuta, where Palestinian Bedouins have lived for generations, located just one kilometer from an illegal settlement called Meitarim Farm established in 2021. Settlers quickly launched a campaign of systematic violence and intimidation against Zanuta residents, including breaking into homes to attack them, draining their water tanks, and pumping sewage onto their farmland.
The report highlights that although villagers “repeatedly reported the attacks to the Israeli police,” “no action was taken.” Even when the Israeli Supreme Court in July 2024 and February 2025 ordered the police and military to facilitate the villagers’ return and protect them from attacks, these orders were ignored. “Israeli police and the military ignored both rulings; every attempt by the villagers to return has been met with ongoing settler violence and the acquiescence of Israeli forces,” the report says.
Instead of calling for restraint, the settlers “received state backing to ramp up their violent campaign.” In April last year, far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock distributed weapons, including off-road vehicles, to settlers in the Hebron area at an event at Meitarim Farm. “The heroic and pioneering settlers living here are fulfilling Zionism, and they need security… We are here to build with them and settle this land,” Smotrich said, praising the settlers’ land grabs.
“The ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven, and state-executed; it aims to accelerate the annexation and settlement expansion agenda of the Israeli government through war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the Amnesty report concludes. The organization calls on the international community to “prevent the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank.”
Notably, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved the establishment of 34 illegal settlements in the West Bank in April, the largest number in a single cabinet session, raising the total number of illegal settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since it took office at the end of 2022 to 103. Since Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in October 2023, attacks by Israeli forces and settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have sharply increased. During this period, Israeli forces in the West Bank have arrested at least 23,000 Palestinians, most of whom were later released.
