Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of West Bank Bedouin & Herding Communities

Amnesty International logo - Wikipedia

Palestinian Bedouins lived for generations in the occupied West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta (Zanuta), sustaining themselves through herding, farming and dairy production. The village was designated as part of Area C under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, placing it under full Israeli military and administrative control. Today, Zanuta is being eaten away by Israeli outposts and settlements and destroyed by state-sponsored violence and terror.

Just 1km from Zanuta, Israeli settlers established an illegal outpost known as Meitarim Farm in 2021. The settlers soon began a sustained campaign of violent attacks and threats against Zanuta’s residents. They set fire to the villagers’ tents and classrooms, broke into their homes, beat them with rifles, threw stones at them, smashed their solar panels and windows, emptied their water tanks and pumped sewage onto their farmland.

The story of Zanuta reflects the fate of dozens of Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities already displaced or at imminent risk of displacement in Area C.

This report lays bare the scale and severity of the ethnic cleansing campaign targeting these communities, carried out in a context of apartheid and unlawful occupation and against the backdrop of an ongoing genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip.

The report also demonstrates—contrary to what too many in the international community suggest—that the campaign is not the product of “rogue” settlers, settlers’ organizations, or “extremist” government ministers.

In other words, settler violence is not an aberration but an integral part of an organized state policy.

The report demonstrates that the ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven and state-implemented; it seeks to accelerate the Israeli government’s annexation agenda and settlement expansion through war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As such, the report’s conclusions demand that the international community fully confront and name the Israeli state-driven project and act decisively to prevent the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank. – Amnesty International