Ramallah: Amnesty Worldwide accused Israel on Wednesday of an “ethnic cleaning” marketing campaign in opposition to Bedouin and herding communities within the occupied West Financial institution.
A brand new report by the rights group discovered that the marketing campaign was geared toward accelerating the annexation of the Palestinian territory, with these rural communities bearing the brunt of Israeli settler violence and compelled displacement.
“Israeli authorities are accelerating annexation by means of a state-driven marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning concentrating on Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities” of the West Financial institution, mentioned the report.
Amnesty mentioned its analysis confirmed that 27 Bedouin and herding communities comprising a whole lot of Palestinians had been forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or had been liable to displacement within the West Financial institution’s Space C, which encompasses 60 p.c of the territory and is underneath full Israeli management underneath the Nineties Oslo agreements.
Within the report titled “Erasing something Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleaning of West Financial institution Bedouin and herding communities”, Amnesty accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities, certainly one of Israel’s most right-wing up to now, of catering to the settler motion’s non secular nationalist agenda.
“It has accelerated settlement enlargement and land grabs, elevated monetary and logistical help to settlements, and it has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned marketing campaign of settler violence,” the report mentioned.
Israel rejected the report.
“Amnesty Worldwide has lengthy since turn out to be a delusional fringe political group whose anti-Israel agenda has eclipsed any dedication to information, objectivity, or the real protection of human rights,” the international ministry mentioned in an announcement to AFP.
“This report is nothing greater than one other try to advance that agenda by means of false and baseless allegations that don’t have any connection to actuality in anyway.”
Amnesty pointed to “specific calls by Israeli officers for settlement enlargement” and “measures geared toward minimizing Palestinian presence in Space C”.
The “ethnic cleaning marketing campaign is state-led, and state-sponsored, not pushed by rogue settlers or so-called extremist ministers”, the report concluded.
– ‘Illegal deportation’ –
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement, is a vocal proponent of annexing the West Financial institution to Israel and on Tuesday was banned from France for actively selling the thought.
In Could 2026, the UN rights workplace additionally denounced indications of “ethnic cleaning” in Gaza and the West Financial institution.
Amnesty pointed to Israel’s authorized tasks as an occupying energy within the West Financial institution, and its violations of worldwide humanitarian legislation.
“These violations embody the struggle crime of illegal deportation and switch and the crime in opposition to humanity of deportation or forcible switch of inhabitants,” the report mentioned.
Israel army opens probe into West Financial institution child’s killing
Bedouin and herder communities, usually remoted and with out safety companies, are significantly weak to the specter of violence or displacement.
Since 2023, AFP reporters have witnessed the departure of a number of Bedouin communities of the West Financial institution underneath stress from settler teams, together with the group of Ras Ein al-Auja in early 2026.
“What is going on at present is the entire collapse of the group because of the settlers’ steady and repeated assaults,” Farhan Jahaleen, a Bedouin from the village, instructed AFP in January.
– ‘Symbolic’ sanctions –
Amnesty’s Secretary Normal Agnes Callamard launched the report in Berlin, saying that Germany and different European nations had “enabled Israel’s coverage of ethnic cleaning”.
She mentioned that whereas focused sanctions in opposition to people had been essential symbolically, they’ve “no influence on the speed of settlement enlargement” or on “the dimensions of settlers’ violence”.
“The EU particularly, should leverage its affect by expediting the long-overdue suspension of its affiliation settlement with Israel,” Callamard instructed reporters.
Since Netanyahu’s authorities got here to energy in late 2022, it has permitted the creation of 102 settlements within the West Financial institution, in accordance with settlement watchdog Peace Now.
Excluding east Jerusalem, greater than 500,000 Israelis reside in settlements within the West Financial institution, which Israel has occupied since 1967, amongst some three million Palestinians.
All Israeli settlements are unlawful underneath worldwide legislation.
Some settlers have engaged in arson, vandalism and theft of personal property in Palestinian communities, in addition to bodily assaults and generally homicide, in accordance with rights teams.
