Mleihat’s account tracks closely with the findings of a report released this week by Amnesty International, which concluded that Israel is pursuing the annexation of a large part of the occupied West Bank through what it called a deliberate, state-backed campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities – amounting to the war crime of unlawful transfer and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.Citing United Nations figures, the report counts some 5,910 Palestinians forced from 117 communities between January 2023 and April 2026, at least 45 of them depopulated entirely. The Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, which includes the land where Mleihat now lives, accounted for the largest share of the displaced.Amnesty’s report focuses on Area C, the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli control, where the state possesses the administrative machinery of removal – including demolition orders, “firing zone” declarations, and the designation of unregistered land as state land.On Mleihat’s plot – which is in Area B, privately registered, and held with an official deed – those levers are largely unavailable. The army cannot easily demolish a legally built home on titled land, and the Civil Administration cannot lawfully evict its owner.What is left, then, is extra-legal force.”The only way for the state to kick them out is illegally,” …
