RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Amnesty International accused Israel on Wednesday of conducting an “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank, saying the measures were designed to accelerate the annexation of the Palestinian territory.
A new report by the rights group found that these rural Palestinian communities are bearing the brunt of Israeli settler violence and forced displacement.
“Israeli authorities are accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities” of the West Bank, said the report released on Wednesday.
Amnesty said its research showed that 27 Bedouin and herding communities comprising hundreds of Palestinians were forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or were at risk of displacement in the West Bank’s Area C, which encompasses 60 percent of the territory and is under Israeli control under the 1990s Oslo agreements.
In the report titled “Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities,” Amnesty accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, one of Israel’s most right-wing to date, of catering to the settler movement’s religious nationalist agenda.
