Amnesty International warns of escalating ethnic cleansing as Israel accelerates West Bank annexations

Amnesty International on Wednesday, 10 June 2026, released a new report warning that urgent action needed to be taken by the international community to stop Israel’s annexation of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank, and warned that inaction was complicity.

The report “Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of West Bank and Bedouin herding communities” exposes how the Israeli government has made formal annexation an explicit policy objective.

During a press conference in Johannesburg, Shenilla Mohamed, Amnesty International SA’s Executive Director, told journalists that over the past three-and-a-half years the Israeli authorities had 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 of two Israeli ministers. What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world,” said Mohamed.

She was referring to limited punitive action taken against a number of extremist Israeli settlers, settler organisations and extreme right-wing Israeli ministers who have been sanctioned by the EU and banned from entering several European countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, due to extreme settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank that has involved extensive destruction of property, arson, beatings, the killing and stealing of livestock and the death and injury of numerous Palestinians.

Illegal under international law

There are more than 750,000 Israeli settlers living in Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The settlements are considered illegal under international law.

“Our report exposes that these abuses are not the result of a few ‘bad apples’. Settler violence is a core component of a state-sanctioned campaign of ethnic cleansing, central to Israel’s system of apartheid,” said Mohamed.

Amnesty International’s research shows Palestinians are being forcibly erased from their ancestral lands, cut off from their livelihoods and terrorised into fleeing their homes amid an unprecedented surge in settler attacks, openly condoned and actively facilitated by an Israeli government that boasts of its intent to formally annex large swathes of Palestinian land, Mohamed told journalists.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities had faced either full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, while by the end of April 2026 at least 5,910 people had been forcibly displaced, Amnesty reported.

Ocha further reported that in a parallel development the Israeli authorities demolished 3,407 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C, displacing 2,996 Palestinians.

The Israeli NGO Peace Now said that this had occurred “amid an unprecedented surge in acts of state-backed settler violence, with Israeli settlers establishing 363 outposts – which differ from the illegal settlements in that they are not connected to water and electricity grid infrastructure – in the occupied territory”, the Amnesty report added.

Break-ins, arson and widespread vandalism

Video and images verified by Amnesty International showed break-ins, arson and widespread vandalism of homes, schools, vehicles and agricultural assets alongside the destruction of water sources, solar panels and food supplies. Interviewees also reported widespread physical violence against Palestinians, including beatings with sticks and rifle butts, stone-throwing, stabbings and other attacks by Israeli settlers.

Amnesty International researched 27 Bedouin and herding communities in Area C, which comprises 60% of the West Bank, that were forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or were at risk of displacement.

The organisation’s research team interviewed dozens of Palestinians, 19 lawyers, activists who witnessed incidents of settler violence, journalists and Israeli and Palestinian NGO representatives.

Amnesty also verified more than 420 videos and images and conducted analysis of official government statements, agreements, legislation, governance changes, court records, maps, satellite imagery, UN and civil society reports and other open-source material.

Within the first three years of the government’s rule, Israel’s Ministry of Settlement and National Mission’s annual budget increased by 122% to $254-million by 2026.

Part and parcel of successive Israeli governments’ policies

However, Mohamed pointed out that although the land expropriation and ethnic settlement had accelerated under Israel’s current government, the land takeover had always been a part and parcel of successive Israeli governments’ policies.

“Since the 1967 occupation, successive Israeli governments – with varying degrees of intensity and transparency – pursued Judaisation policies which seek to maximise Jewish control over land in the West Bank while minimising Palestinian presence,” said Mohamed.

Israel’s 37th government, formed in late 2022 and led by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, in coalition with Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism parties, had openly and deliberately pursued formal annexation of Area C and the forcible transfer of Palestinian residents, the report added.

But the international community’s passive complicity came in for especially strong criticism.

“To world leaders who have framed the annexation and settler violence as isolated acts of extremist settlers or ministers and imposed limited sanctions against some individuals and organisations, Amnesty’s report must be a wake-up call,” said Mohamed. “To world leaders who repeatedly say they oppose annexation but do nothing to stop it: know that your inaction is directly fuelling crimes against humanity and has global consequences further eroding the rules-based international order.” DM