Amnesty says Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinians from West Bank’s Area C
Israeli forces guard a bulldozer reportedly operating on Palestinian lands near the village of Dura, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on 9 June 2026
Oliver Mizzi reports in The New Arab on 10 June 2026:
Israel is carrying out the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Bedouin and herder communities in the occupied West Bank, a new report by Amnesty International has said.
The report, released on Wednesday, details how the displacement of Bedouins and herders in Area C – which is under full Israeli military and civil control and covers 60% of the West Bank – is a direct result of Israeli state policy and support for violent Jewish settlers.
At least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities comprising a total of 5,910 people were partially or fully displaced from their land between January 2023 and April 2026, according to the report. Most of this displacement was attributed to settler attacks.
Amnesty International’s Researcher for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Budour Hassan, told The New Arab: “Contrary to what many in the international community would like to suggest or pretend, we’re talking about state policy, we’re talking about a campaign sponsored, supported, armed, [and] granted impunity by the state.”
“There’s no way to pretend otherwise,” she added.
Settler attacks in the West Bank on 2025, Al Jazeera, West Bank ethnic cleansing, settler attacks Israel’s state policy, 10 June 2026
Aiding settlers, displacing Palestinians
Titled ‘Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities’, the report draws on the testimony of 64 people, including 49 Palestinians from affected communities, as well as other documentation to map how settler violence is an “integral part of an organized state policy”.
Since the formation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government in December 2022, Israel has “openly embraced the settler movement’s vision of ‘Greater Israel'” according to the report. It argues that state policy has accelerated the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land while aiding and abetting settler violence – particularly following the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
This includes giving settlers funding for arms, vehicles and drones to sustain illegal outposts, and allowing the army and police to participate alongside settlers in attacks, rather than preventing or arresting the perpetrators of violence – essentially entrenching impunity, Amnesty says.