Amnesty International accused Israel Wednesday of conducting a “state-sponsored” campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank against Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities over the last three and a half years, designed to accelerate the annexation of the territory.

The report by Amnesty, a frequent and ardent critic of Israel, detailed the severe violence engaged in by settler extremists against such communities, and what it said is the failure of Israeli authorities to prosecute the extremists who harass them, vandalize their property, and on numerous occasions have severely wounded or killed Palestinians inside their own towns and villages.

The report also detailed the massive increase in the establishment of new settlements by the Israeli government, alongside illegal herding outposts established by settlers, as part of what Amnesty said is an effort to drive Palestinians off the land — in particular in Area C, where Israel has full security and civilian control under the Oslo Accords and which constitutes some 60 percent of the West Bank.

The organization cited figures from the UN showing that some 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities “have faced either full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026,” amounting to at least 5,910 people who Amnesty said have been forcibly displaced.

“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,” Amnesty alleged.

In the report titled “Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and........

© The Times of Israel