"Not a Few Bad Apples" — A System Built to Dispossess

On June 10, 2026, Amnesty International released a 149-page report concluding what Palestinians have been saying for decades: the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank is not the work of rogue individuals. It is a state-led, state-sanctioned, state-implemented campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to permanently annex Palestinian territory — a finding that echoes what UN experts declared months ago: settler violence is ethnic cleansing.

The report documents that 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities have been fully or partially displaced between January 2023 and April 2026 — at least 5,910 people driven from their ancestral land. The United Nations has tracked over 7,280 individual displacements from home demolitions alone during the same period. Over 100 West Bank villages have been emptied.

But the report's most damning finding wasn't the numbers. It was the architecture behind them.

What the international media persistently frames as "settler violence" — as if it were a neighborhood dispute between two aggrieved parties — is in fact an integrated paramilitary system operating with the full backing of the Israeli state. The so-called "settlers" are not civilians who happen to live in the West Bank. They are overwhelmingly former IDF soldiers, armed and organized by the state, embedded within military command structures, and deployed as the vanguard of territorial expansion.

This is not spontaneous violence. This is organized dispossession. This is ethnic cleansing by design.

The Numbers: A Decade of Accelerating Terror

The scale of settler violence in the West Bank has reached levels that are difficult to comprehend without the data.

West Bank Settler Violence — The Record

Source: Oxfam analysis of UN data, published June 10, 2026

In just three years, more Palestinians were killed in the West Bank than in the previous seventeen years combined. Nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since October 2023 — more than triple the figure for the prior fourteen years.

The violence has not slowed in 2026. According to the United Nations:

• 1,835 attacks by settlers against Palestinians were documented in 2025, resulting in casualties or property damage across roughly 280 communities
• The Israeli military recorded 867 incidents of nationalistic crime and settler violence in 2025, up from 682 in 2024
• In just one week in early June 2026, 50 separate settler attacks resulted in casualties or property damage
• The UN reports an average of six attacks per day causing casualties or damage
• Over 150 attacks on olive harvesters were recorded during the 2025 harvest season alone

These are not isolated incidents. They are the statistical footprint of a campaign.

Armed by the State: How Settlers Get Their Weapons

There is a fundamental question the international media almost never asks: where do these "settlers" get their guns?

The answer: directly from the Israeli government.

Since October 2023, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — himself a convicted extremist who was banned from running for the Knesset for years due to his support for Kahanist terrorism — has overseen a mass arming of West Bank settlers. His office has:

• Issued 230,000 new firearm licenses since taking office
• Personally distributed 10,000 assault rifles to Jewish-Israeli civilians, including West Bank settlers
• Approved personal gun licenses in 18 illegal settlements explicitly to "enhance self-defence"
• Encouraged the creation of a "National Guard" that functions as a settler militia network

Every single Jewish Israeli settler in the West Bank is a product of Israel's mandatory conscription system. Under Israeli law, most Jewish citizens — men and women — are required to serve in the IDF. This means the settlers carrying out pogroms are not civilians with guns. They are trained military veterans equipped with military-grade weaponry provided by the state.

As Middle East Eye reported, "settlers, all of whom are living illegally in the West Bank, have ready access to weapons ranging from M16 assault rifles to Tavor rifles, with the backing of the state."

The arming is deliberate. The targeting is deliberate. The system is deliberate.

Aerial view of burned vehicles and damaged property in the Palestinian town of Huwara after a settler rampage, February 2023

The Pogroms: A Pattern, Not an Anomaly

The word "pogrom" has a specific meaning: an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. What has happened in the West Bank is not merely "violence" or "clashes." It is a series of pogroms — coordinated, armed attacks designed to terrorize Palestinian communities into fleeing.

Huwara, February 26, 2023

The defining pogrom of the current era. Hundreds of Israeli settlers descended on the Palestinian town of Huwara in the northern West Bank in a late-night rampage, leaving one Palestinian dead and over 100 injured, four critically. The town was set ablaze — homes, cars, businesses.

One Israeli government minister, Bezalel Smotrich, later declared that Huwara should be "erased" by the state of Israel. He is currently Israel's Finance Minister and holds authority over civil administration in the West Bank.

Huwara was attacked again on June 6, 2026 — nine Palestinians wounded, livestock stolen, an auto repair shop set on fire. This is not an isolated incident. As we've documented before, pogrom campaigns against West Bank communities like Jalud, Burin, and Madama have become a near-weekly occurrence.

The Toll of the Pogroms: Documented Major Attacks

The Duma pogrom stands as a precursor — settlers firebombed the Dawabsha family home in the middle of the night, burning 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha alive. His parents later died of their wounds. Only one person was ever convicted, and Israel's security establishment was later revealed to have shielded suspects. The message was clear then, and it has only been reinforced since: there is no cost for killing Palestinians.

Palestinian farmers with sheep grazing in the West Bank near Deir Jarir

Livestock Theft: Starvation as a Weapon

The method of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is not only bullets and fire. It is hunger.

According to the Palestinian Authority's Agriculture Ministry, settlers have killed or stolen 8,000 sheep and goats in the West Bank in 2026 alone. We covered this phenomenon as a deliberate weapon of dispossession earlier this month. This is not random theft. It is systematic deprivation targeting the Bedouin and herding communities that have lived off the land for generations.

The tactic is straightforward: steal or kill the livestock, and the community cannot eat. Without their herds, Palestinian herders have no income, no food security, no reason to stay. They leave. The settlers move in.

This is what Project Censored documented as "agricultural terrorism" — violence extended beyond killing people to setting hundreds of fires, destroying close to 5,000 farming structures, and uprooting 27,000 olive trees in recent years.

Agricultural Destruction in the West Bank (Documented)

The theft of 8,000 sheep and goats in six months is not petty crime. It is the destruction of an entire livelihood system. For Bedouin communities whose identity and survival are tied to their herds, it is existential.

Palestinian woman standing near olive trees damaged by settlers in Qusra

The Shepherding Outposts: Land Theft on the Cheap

One of the most effective tools in the settler colonization toolkit is the "shepherding outpost" — a tactic so simple it borders on the absurd.

Here's how it works: a handful of settlers pitch a tent on Palestinian agricultural land, bring a water tank and some sheep, and raise an Israeli flag. They claim they are "grazing." Within days, the IDF arrives and declares the area a "closed military zone." Palestinians are barred from their own land. The outpost expands. An illegal settlement is born.

The cost to settlers: virtually nothing. A tent and a water tank.

The cost to Palestinians: everything.

Between 1967 and 2022, Israeli settlers stole roughly 7% of all land in the West Bank. From 2022 to 2024, they doubled that to 14% — stealing as much land in two years as in the previous 55. Activists on the ground estimate the number has likely tripled by 2026.

Since January 2023, Israel has declared more than 20,000 dunums (2,000 hectares) in the Jordan Valley alone as "state land" — state land meaning land that Palestinians are barred from using but settlers can build on.

The Hagmar Units: When Settlers Put On Uniforms

Perhaps the most damning evidence of the integrated nature of settler violence and state power is the existence of the Hagmar — Israel's regional defense reserve units in the West Bank.

These are IDF reserve units staffed entirely by local settlers. They wear IDF uniforms, carry IDF-issued weapons, operate under IDF command, and are paid IDF salaries. But they are, in practice, the same men who carry out settler pogroms in civilian clothes.

A reservist who served in the West Bank described the Hagmar to The Guardian as "armed militias doing what they want."

According to Yesh Din, which tracks settler violence, seven Palestinians were shot dead by Hagmar soldiers during the 40-day war with Iran alone (April–May 2026). That is a death toll from "defense" units that exceeds most active combat deployments.

The Hagmar system creates an almost perfect cover for violence:

1. Settlers serve in Hagmar units, receiving military training, weapons, and legal immunity
2. In uniform, they can stop, search, beat, and shoot Palestinians under military authority
3. Out of uniform, they participate in settler pogroms with the same weapons and training
4. When investigated, they are protected by the same military justice system that has a 97.4% impunity rate for settler violence complaints

In March 2026, IDF soldiers — including Hagmar reservists — were filmed standing by as masked settlers torched vehicles in the Palestinian village of Shuqba. Border Police later arrested four Israeli civilians and one Hagmar reservist, whose weapon was confiscated and who was suspended from duty.

One incident. One suspension. The system absorbs the exposure and continues.

The Command Structure: Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the State

The settler paramilitary apparatus is not a rogue operation. It is directed from the highest levels of the Israeli government.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds dual authority over the West Bank through his role in the Defense Ministry. He has used this position to:

• Quietly transfer administrative control of the West Bank from military to civilian authority — a move legal experts describe as de facto annexation
• Approve record settlement expansion, including the controversial E1 project that would bisect the West Bank
• Declare the Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin village for demolition, prompting the ICC to issue a warrant for his arrest
• Oversee the seizure of 20,000+ dunums as "state land" in the Jordan Valley

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir controls Israel's police forces, including those operating in the West Bank. He has:

• Distributed 10,000 assault rifles to settler "National Guard" members
• Approved gun licenses for 18 illegal settlements
• Issued 230,000 new firearm permits
• Frequently praised settlers accused of murdering Palestinians, calling them heroes
• Created the National Guard specifically as a paramilitary force with no meaningful civilian oversight

In November 2024, the Israeli government cancelled the procedure of administrative detention for Israeli settlers in the West Bank — meaning settlers can no longer be held without trial, even when accused of violent crimes against Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinians in the West Bank remain subject to administrative detention without charge or trial.

The legal framework is not neutral. It is engineered to protect the perpetrators and criminalize the victims.

The Impunity Machine: 97.4% and Counting

According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, 97.4% of complaints submitted to Israeli police by Palestinians who suffered damage to their property or person at the hands of settlers are closed without charges.

This is not a broken justice system. It is a justice system working exactly as designed.

The cycle is predictable and repeatable:

1. Settlers attack a Palestinian community — burning homes, stealing livestock, shooting at residents
2. Palestinians file complaints with Israeli police
3. Police investigate — or don't
4. If charges are filed, military prosecutors decline to pursue them in the vast majority of cases
5. The case is closed. No consequences. The settlers return.

In the rare cases where settlers are prosecuted, sentences are light to nonexistent. The state that arms them also shields them. The military that trains them also employs them. The government that funds them also represents them. As we noted in our coverage of The West Bank Is Burning, organized settler violence operates with full state backing — and as the ICC warrant for Smotrich triggered the erasure of Khan al-Ahmar, the legal architecture of annexation accelerates alongside the violence.

Palestinian woman amid ruins of demolished home in Masafer Yatta

The Human Cost: "We Used to Deal With Settlers All the Time"

Behind every statistic is a destroyed life. The Oxfam report published alongside the Amnesty findings includes testimony from Palestinians who have been displaced.

Saed, 50, from the Ein Samya community in the Jordan Valley:

"We used to deal with settlers all the time, but over the past three years, settler violence has increased massively. Eventually we had to leave and now a settler is staying in my home. I saw him. He took over the community too. It breaks my heart to talk about the past."

"We went to another community in Jericho, but it did not stop there. Settlers closed the roads, carried weapons, harassed and terrified our children on their way to school, and grazed their livestock inside our community, next to our houses. In the worst cases they would steal our livestock under the protection of the army and police."

Hamden, a Palestinian shepherd from the Jordan Valley, described settlers erecting an outpost meters from his family's land, soldiers arriving, and telling them: "you were going to be burned alive. They want our land."

This is not a story about two peoples in conflict. This is a story about one state, one army, and one paramilitary apparatus, systematically dispossessing an indigenous population of their land, their homes, their livelihoods, and their lives — while the world calls it "settler violence" and moves on.

Sanctions: Too Little, Too Late — and Only Symbolic

On June 9, 2026 — one day before the Amnesty report dropped — the UK, Canada, France, and Norway announced coordinated sanctions against six firms and one individual involved in financing and enabling settler violence. The UK issued its first-ever business advisory warning against economic activity in illegal settlements.

It was, by any measure, a symbolic gesture.

None of the sanctions targeted the individuals actually directing the ethnic cleansing — Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, or Netanyahu. None of the sanctions addressed the Hagmar units, the mass arming of settlers, or the transfer of West Bank administration to civilian control. None of the sanctions required Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes or seizing land as "state property."

As Al Jazeera reported, campaigners said the sanctions were "not enough" and called for targeting the Israeli government itself.

Meanwhile, the pogroms continue — from settlements to Cyprus, the colonization machine never sleeps. The fires burn. The livestock disappears. The families flee. And the settlements expand.

What This Is: Call It By Its Name

The evidence is overwhelming, documented, and growing by the day:

• 117 communities displaced since 2023
• 5,910 people forced from their homes
• 1,244 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in three years
• 268 children killed — more than one in five of all deaths
• 8,000 sheep and goats stolen in six months
• 27,000 olive trees destroyed
• 230,000 new gun licenses issued to settlers
• 10,000 assault rifles distributed by the government
• 97.4% impunity rate for settler violence
• 46,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced since October 2023
• 1,835 documented settler attacks in 2025 alone — six per day

This is not a "conflict." This is not "violence." This is not a "cycle."

This is a state-directed, militarily-backed, legally-shielded campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by a paramilitary force of armed settlers — trained by the IDF, paid by the state, protected by the courts, and empowered by ministers who openly call for Palestinian erasure.

Call it what it is.

Ethnic cleansing. By paramilitary settlers. Backed by the state. Funded by the government. Observed by the world. Enabled by our silence.