Amnesty International has accused Israel's government of having made the formal annexation of the occupied West Bank a declared policy goal.
"Over the past three and a half years Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard in a statement issued on Wednesday following the release of a report.
The human rights organization said the attacks were not the work of a few "bad apples."
"Settler violence is a core component of a state-sanctioned campaign of ethnic cleansing, central to maintaining Israel’s system of apartheid," it said.
Amnesty: Israel's government tolerates attacks
A report by the UN human rights office had previously warned in March of war crimes being committed in the West Bank. The significantly expanded settler activities indicated coordinated actions and a policy of mass displacement, it said.
Amnesty International accused Israel of violently forcing Palestinians off their land, depriving them of their livelihoods and forcing them to flee. The attacks were "openly condoned and actively facilitated" by the Israeli government.
Callamard also criticized the international community as either being "complicit in or far too passive in the face of Israel’s repeated and gross violations of international law."
"It must clearly signal that the era of tacit acquiescence to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and annexation is over," Callamard said.
