New report says Zionist entity is targeting Palestinian Bedouins to accelerate annexation
RAMALLAH: Amnesty International accused the Zionist entity on Wednesday of an ethnic cleansing campaign against Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank. A new report by the rights group found that the campaign was aimed at accelerating the annexation of the Palestinian territory, with these rural communities bearing the brunt of the Zionist entity’s settler violence and forced displacement. “(Zionist) 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.
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 full Zionist control under the 1990s Oslo agreements.
In the report titled “Erasing anything Palestinian: (the Zionist entity)’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities”, Amnesty accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, one of the Zionist entity’s most right-wing to date, of catering to the settler movement’s religious nationalist agenda. “It has accelerated settlement expansion and land grabs, increased financial and logistical support to settlements, and it has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence,” the report said.
The Zionist entity rejected the report as false and baseless. Amnesty pointed to “explicit calls by (Zionist) officials for settlement expansion” and “measures aimed at minimizing Palestinian presence in Area C”. The “ethnic cleansing campaign is state-led, and state-sponsored, not driven by rogue settlers or so-called extremist ministers,” the report concluded.
TAYBEH: A Zionist settler leads his herd of livestock through the Palestinian Bedouin community of Dar Abu Faza, on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank village of Taybeh, on June 9, 2026.
‘Unlawful deportation’
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement, is a vocal proponent of annexing the West Bank to the Zionist entity and on Tuesday was banned from France for actively promoting the idea. In May 2026, the UN rights office also decried indications of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and the West Bank.
Amnesty pointed to the Zionist entity’s legal responsibilities as an occupying power in the West Bank, and its violations of international humanitarian law. “These violations include the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer and the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer of population,” the report said.
Bedouin and herder communities, often isolated and without security services, are particularly vulnerable to the threat of violence or displacement. Since 2023, AFP reporters have witnessed the departure of several Bedouin communities of the West Bank under pressure from settler groups, including the community of Ras Ein Al-Auja in early 2026. “What is happening today is the complete collapse of the community as a result of the settlers’ continuous and repeated attacks,” Farhan Jahaleen, a Bedouin from the village, told AFP in January.
‘Symbolic’ sanctions
Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard launched the report in Berlin, saying that Germany and other European countries had “enabled (the Zionist entity)’s policy of ethnic cleansing.” She said that while targeted sanctions against individuals were important symbolically, they have “no impact on the rate of settlement expansion” or on “the scale of settlers’ violence”. “The EU in particular, must leverage its influence by expediting the long-overdue suspension of its association agreement with (the Zionist entity),” Callamard told reporters.
Since Netanyahu’s government came to power in late 2022, it has approved the creation of 102 settlements in the West Bank, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now. Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 citizens of the Zionist entity live in settlements in the West Bank, which the Zionist entity has occupied since 1967, among some three million Palestinians. All Zionist settlements are illegal under international law. Some settlers have engaged in arson, vandalism and theft of private property in Palestinian communities, as well as physical assaults and sometimes murder, according to rights groups. — AFP
