Published On 11/6/2026
Amnesty International said that the sharp acceleration in the pace of ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel against the Palestinians in the West Bank must prompt urgent global action to stop the annexation of the West Bank and cut support for the occupation and its racist regime.
The organization explained, in a new report entitled “Erasing Everything that is Palestinian,” that the current Israeli government has made official annexation a declared political goal, and is implementing the national-religious plan of the settlement movement through a state-led ethnic cleansing campaign targeting Bedouin and herding communities in Area C, which constitutes about 60% of the occupied West Bank.
She added that this campaign is not the result of the work of “rogue settlers” or “extremist” ministers, but rather “deliberate state-led annexation” through expanding settlement, seizing land, increasing financial and logistical support for the settlements, arming the settlers, and enabling them to launch an unprecedented wave of attacks on the Palestinians to uproot them from their lands, strip them of their property, and forcibly displace them.
Amnesty International stated that settler violence, supported by the government and the army, has become a major tool for forced displacement, as hundreds of settlement outposts have been established, including dozens of pastoral outposts that are used to seize large areas of land, while demolition operations and long-term deprivation of basic services turn large areas in the Jordan Valley and the hills of South Hebron into uninhabitable environments.
According to the United Nations, at least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities have been subjected to complete or partial forced displacement since January 2023. At least 5,910 Palestinians have been displaced, while settlers, with official support, have continued their attacks on homes, lands, water sources, and livelihoods.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard criticized what she described as the “complicity or passivity” of the international community, saying that countries’ failure to act, despite their legal obligations to end the illegal occupation and apartheid system, “directly fuels crimes against humanity” and undermines the international order.
The organization called on countries, especially those with influence on Israel, to stop trade, cooperation and investment relations that enable and support occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and to impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on the Israeli officials involved, to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, to press to dismantle settlements and outposts, and to guarantee the right of displaced Palestinians to return to their lands.
