Palestine: Risk of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
MSF urges states with close ties to Israel to apply meaningful pressure to halt the forced displacement of Palestinians.
Across the West Bank, Palestinians are facing forced mass displacement by Israeli forces and settlers, significantly heightening the risk of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory, warns Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This comes amid recent calls by Israeli authorities for the country to annex the West Bank.
More than at any point in our 36-year history of providing medical and psychological care in Palestine, MSF sees how the suffering wrought by the Israeli occupation has become normalized.
In 2025, MSF teams has witnessed policies and practices that are blatantly designed to remove people from their land and prevent any possibility of return. MSF urges third-party states, especially those with close political, military or economic ties to Israel – including the U.S. and European Union member states – to apply meaningful pressure to halt practices that harm and forcibly displace Palestinians and to ensure an end to the occupation that is illegal under international law.
“We asked them if we could retrieve our belongings and take some things out of the houses before they demolished them, but they refused. They took our things out of our home, they drove over them with the bulldozer and destroyed them.”
Warda*, a community member in Hebron
“Over the past few years, we have seen the impact of the Israeli forces and settlers exerting increased force and control over the Palestinian people – culminating in a genocide in Gaza, and military repression and settler violence escalating across the West Bank,” says Simona Onidi, MSF project coordinator in Jenin and Tulkarem.
“These actions are entrenched in the broader settler-colonial process, where the risk of ethnic cleansing – through the forced removal of Palestinian communities – will cement permanent demographic change,” says Onidi.
Tactics of displacement are expanding and intensifying
A recently approved project, known as the ‘E1 settlement plan,’ would completely bisect the West Bank, block off the north from the south and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. This is one of the clearest recent attempts by the Israeli authorities to kill any prospect of a Palestinian future.
Militarized operations have displaced tens of thousands
Since the beginning of the year, the ongoing Israeli military operation known as ‘Iron Wall’ has forcibly displaced 40,000 people in the northern West Bank, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Three refugee camps have been violently raided and emptied.
Homes and civilian infrastructure, including schools and healthcare centres, have been demolished, increasing the likelihood the displacement will become permanent.
In response, MSF has sent mobile medical teams across 42 sites in Tulkarem and Jenin, including to the Ministry of Health clinics, and delivered key relief items to displaced Palestinians.
Israeli forces are destroying Palestinian homes
Between January 2024 and the end of May 2025, 2,825 Palestinians have been displaced due to home demolitions, according to OCHA. In April and May of this year alone, MSF provided material and mental health support to residents in 12 locations in the Hebron governorate whose homes were demolished. Two hundred forty six people, including at least 97 children, were forcibly displaced.
This represents only a fraction of the number of demolitions that have been carried out in the West Bank in the same period.
“This is not the first demolition or army incursion that has happened in the village, but this time was the most aggressive,” says Warda*, a community member in Hebron. “We asked them if we could retrieve our belongings and take some things out of the houses before they demolished them, but they refused. They took our things out of our home, they drove over them with the bulldozer and destroyed them.”
Settler violence continues with impunity
Settler attacks, often carried out with total impunity and under army protection, are also causing increasing levels of displacement. Since the beginning of 2023, nearly 2,900 Palestinians have been displaced due to settler violence and movement restrictions blocking Palestinians from essential services.
Since June 2025, most of the villages in Masafer Yatta have faced daily settler attacks and military searches.
In an assessment among 197 households in Hebron governorate, MSF found that households with at least one member exposed to violence were 2.3 times more likely to exhibit severe mental distress. At the same time, 28 per cent of families reported that at least one member had experienced violence in the past three months.
Increased movement restrictions block access to healthcare, school and work
Palestinians in the West Bank are also subjected to overwhelming physical barriers designed to make life unviable and push them from their lands. These include movement restrictions, such as checkpoints, which have increased in number. From December 2024 to February 2025, 36 new checkpoints were introduced. Temporary checkpoints, which can appear unpredictably, have also increased – from 116 between October and December 2023 to 370 between January and April 2025. These restrictions are directly impacting people’s access to healthcare, schools, work and other essential services. As a result, people are turning to MSF mobile clinics rather than attempting to reach hospitals, even when specialized care is needed.
Attacks on water endanger entire communities
Palestinians in the West Bank face severe limitations on basic services, including water – access to which is controlled by the Israeli authorities.
Since May 2025, there has been a substantial reduction in the water supply by an Israeli water company through two main Israeli pipeline connection points to Hebron governorate. This has reduced the public water supply in Hebron by more than 50 per cent, affecting nearly 800,000 people.
MSF has also responded to reports of settlers cutting water pipes. This includes confirmed incidents in August 2025, such as in a village in South Hebron Hills, where 50 per cent of the community was impacted by water shortage. The need in these areas is now so high and widespread that MSF’s emergency water and sanitation activities are no longer sufficient. Our teams have delivered 30 water tanks to families in South Hebron Hills to help store the limited trucked water they rely on.
“It’s not only about demolishing our houses. They also take our land, they try to steal our income and make it impossible for us to live here. All the people here live from farming and shepherding activities. But the settlers prevent us from grazing our sheep, so that we can’t make a living anymore if we stay here.”
Community member in Masafer Yatta
Loss of land, work permits and freedom of movement is destroying Palestinian livelihoods
Palestinians’ livelihoods are also increasingly threatened by the cancellation of work permits, movement restrictions that block access to jobs and attacks on agricultural land and shepherds, further undermining their ability to sustain themselves.
“It’s not only about demolishing our houses. They also take our land, they try to steal our income and make it impossible for us to live here,” says a community member in Masafer Yatta. “All the people here live from farming and shepherding activities. But the settlers prevent us from grazing our sheep, so that we can’t make a living anymore if we stay here.”
Israel’s annexation-driven policies in the occupied West Bank constitute serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. An end to the occupation remains the only path to alleviating the profound hardship faced by Palestinians.
*Name has been changed.
