A landmark new investigation from Amnesty International has concluded that a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank is not being carried out by rogue extremist actors, but directed and implemented by the Israeli state itself.
Released on Wednesday, the 150-page comprehensive report documents that Israeli state authorities are perpetrating the crime against humanity of forcible transfer through a coordinated, state-driven campaign that specifically targets Palestinian Bedouin and nomadic herding communities located in Area C of the occupied West Bank.
Area C accounts for approximately 60 percent of the entire West Bank’s total land area, and falls under full Israeli military and civilian control — a status that directly violates established international law. The report details multiple interconnected policies advanced by the Israeli government to displace local Palestinian communities: authorities have expanded access to gun licenses for civilian settlers, growing the number of armed civilians operating in the area; increased public and private funding for illegal Israeli settlements; accelerated the construction of new settlement infrastructure; and pushed forward the formal legalization of unauthorised outposts.
Under Israeli domestic law, outposts are classified as unauthorized settlements built in contravention of local regulations, yet Israeli authorities have increasingly moved to retroactively legalize these encroachments in recent years. Critically, all Israeli settlements across the entire West Bank are already deemed illegal under binding international law, a position confirmed by decades of United Nations resolutions and global legal consensus.
The investigation also uncovered that administrative control of large swathes of Area C is being progressively transferred to pro-settlement Israeli civilian bodies, while state-led initiatives to seize additional Palestinian-owned land in the region are being expanded at an unprecedented pace.
Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, emphasized the scale and intentionality of the campaign: “Over the past three and a half years Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities. This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labelled as extremist settlers, organisations or one or two ministers. What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”
The findings come just days after a group of six Western nations — the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and Norway — imposed sanctions on six organisations and one individual linked to illegal Israeli annexation efforts in the West Bank. In a joint statement, the countries noted that “for too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the Government of Israel.” The group stopped short of imposing measures against the Israeli state itself, saying it would only take that step if the Israeli government failed to “take urgent steps to address the situation on the ground.”
Callamard condemned the international community’s response to date, arguing that global powers have been either complicit in or passively tolerant of Israel’s ongoing violation of international law, as well as resolutions passed by both the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council. She called for immediate collective action: “States, particularly those with influence over Israel, including the USA, the UK, Germany, as well as Italy and other EU and Arab states, must immediately ban all trade, investment and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
This report adds to growing international scrutiny of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank, amid rising displacement of Palestinian communities and escalating violence by settlers against local residents.