Community displacement and ethnic cleansing
- May 25
- 5 min read
The West Bank is dotted with Palestinian shepherding communities subsisting on herding and agriculture. Most of these communities were driven out of the Negev desert upon Israel’s establishment, and have lived at their current sites in the West Bank for decades. Over the past decade, and with growing intensity since October 2023, families and entire communities have been forced out through settler violence that is systemic and ongoing, together with the lack of protection from Israeli authorities and the use of bureaucratic and military processes to remove them.
With communities displaced at a growing pace each year, a series of factors point to efforts amounting to ethnic cleansing, and serious violations of international law. These factors include the scale and systemic nature of the violence, the failure of security forces to prevent attacks or to create conditions for a safe return home, and State support for outposts and broader land-seizure measures.
Community displacement – figures and trends
According to B’Tselem figures, October 7, 2023 to mid March 2026 saw the forcible displacement of 763 families, a total of 4,530 women, men and children from their homes and lands. They belong to 59 communities that were fully displaced and 16 that were partially displaced, including some of the largest shepherding communities in the West Bank.
The first quarter of 2026 saw a spike both in the number of attacks and in the level of violence used against community members, as well as in the number of ousted communities. An analysis of B’Tselem figures indicates that about 30% of all persons displaced in recent years were forced out of their homes in the first two and a half months of 2026. From early January 2026 until March 16, 15 communities were fully displaced and eight were partially displaced, a total of 329 families, including 853 children.
Though most of these communities have resided at their locations for decades, the Civil Administration has persistently refused to officially recognize most of them or plan for their regularization. Consequently, the Israeli authorities consider most homes, public buildings, and even water cisterns in these communities to be illegal construction, placing them under constant threat of demolition or sealing. This exclusionary policy has created fertile ground for the establishment of outposts nearby, which serve as launching pads for violence. Settlers from these outposts routinely harass and physically assault community members and block their access to the grazing fields and water sources they have used for many years. By leaving these communities without official recognition or protection, the State effectively enables settlers to invade, hurt, and expel them from Area C and, recently, from Area B as well.
The modus operandi involves a series of interconnected measures: surrounding the communities with outposts, sometimes adjacent to the Palestinian village itself, and applying systemic, persistent settler violence that, according to visual documentation and testimonies, includes physical assaults; humiliation and degradation; threats, including threats of sexual violence; harm to livestock and livestock theft; property damage and theft; blocking access to grazing land, water sources and vital resources; home invasions; and maintaining a menacing presence.
The State either turns a blind eye to the harassment or actively adds to the pressure faced by communities by issuing and executing demolition orders against so-called illegal construction, confiscating property, issuing closed military zone orders, and imposing other restrictions on movement. This is also furthered when soldiers present during attacks back up the settlers.
In many cases, homes and equipment that displaced Palestinians are forced to leave behind are destroyed or set on fire immediately after the expulsion by settlers or Civil Administration personnel. In other cases, Palestinians destroy their own homes or property before fleeing.
Security forces not only fail to prevent the displacement in the first place but proceed to ignore the communities’ right to come back to their homes and do nothing to create the conditions necessary to enable it. In a petition filed by Torat Tzedek and representatives of the Wadi a Siq community demanding to ensure the community members’ safe return to their place of residence after they were violently forced out back in 2023, security officials replied that they would make preparations for the return, but provided no guarantee that they would act to prevent renewed attacks by settlers from the nearby outpost. These are the same settlers whose actions forced the community out in the first place. The petition is pending.
A letter sent by ACRI and Bimkom to security and law enforcement officials in July 2025 detailing dozens of incidents of violence and displacement has gone unanswered. The policy of tolerating violence and forced displacement appears to remain in force, given that in the months since, additional communities have been expelled at an increasing rate.
For further reading and updated information:
B’Tselem, Rolling list: Ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities and lone families in the West Bank
Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Stop the Ethnic Cleansing and Expulsion of West Bank Palestinian Communities, April 16, 2026
Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Displaced Communities, Forgotten People: Israel’s Forcible Transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank
Forcible transfer of the West Bank’s largest shepherding community, Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja
In January 2026, Ras Ein al-‘Auja, the West Bank’s largest shepherding community and the last one remaining in the southern Jordan Valley, underwent an expulsion. Community residents were forced to leave after years of relentless and well-documented settler harassment, which included daily intimidation, incursions into the residential area, theft of sheep and goats, damage to property and water sources, and blocked access and shrinking grazing areas. The village was home to about 150 families, some of which arrived in the ‘Ein al-‘Auja area before 1967 and some in the 1970s. The families leased privately-owned Palestinian land and made their living from shepherding and small-scale agriculture. Although they leased private land registered under the Jordanian land-settlement regime, the Civil Administration did not recognize the community as an official locality: no plan was prepared for it, and no “demarcation line” was set to define its boundaries and strengthen its status on the ground. Outposts established in the area over the years took over grazing areas and water sources, causing ongoing harm to the livelihoods and daily lives of Palestinian residents. In 2024, the situation deteriorated when a shepherding outpost was built just a few hundred meters from the community. Harassment and attacks became a daily ordeal, but appeals to the police went unanswered (Hebrew).
In March 2025, six community residents filed a petition demanding that the State protect them from the daily attacks. After repeated postponements, and after the community’s residents had already been forced to leave their homes, in February 2026, the court ordered the military, the police, and the Civil Administration to help them return to the site and ensure their safety. The Court later ordered the military to provide an update by May 19, 2026, of the measures taken to enable residents’ return to their land. As of this writing, the State has yet to file the update, and no known steps have been taken.
Further reading:
Bimkom-Planning and Human Rights, Largest Palestinian Herder Community in Area C Under Threat of Displacement