Ethnic Cleansing as Public Discourse: Applying the UN’s Definition to the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Note: Gaza is not included here as it is the site of genocide, which is an extreme form of ethnic cleansing. which however has a clear legal definition that has already been proven in December 2023.
While ethnic cleansing lacks a formal codification in international law, it remains a powerful conceptual tool in public discourse and normative assessments of state violence. This post examines the applicability of the United Nations Commission of Experts’ working definition of ethnic cleansing – originally articulated in the context of the Yugoslav Wars – to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, specifically the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Drawing on human rights reports, legal analysis, and demographic policy, I argue that elements of Israeli state practice align with the definitional criteria of ethnic cleansing, particularly when understood through the lens of population engineering, coercive displacement, and structural violence.
The term ethnic cleansing occupies a peculiar space in international law and human rights discourse. It is widely recognized yet legally ambiguous – used to describe extreme forms of demographic engineering, but not formally prosecuted as a standalone crime. Originating in public discussions during the Yugoslav Wars, the term has since been deployed to characterize various patterns of group-based displacement and territorial reconfiguration. This essay revisits the foundational working definition offered by the United Nations Commission of Experts on the Former Yugoslavia (1993) and explores its applicability to the contemporary situation in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The 1993 UN Commission defined ethnic cleansing as: “A purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” Although this definition has not been codified in the Rome Statute or other legal instruments, it has served as a normative benchmark in evaluating state conduct. The constituent acts of ethnic cleansing – forced displacement, murder, rape, destruction of property, and persecution – overlap significantly with crimes recognized under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international criminal law (e.g., crimes against humanity and genocide). Importantly, ethnic cleansing is not defined solely by acts of violence but by their strategic integration into a demographic project – the reconfiguration of space through coercion.
Because ethnic cleansing is not a distinct crime under international law, its usage tends to fall within political, ethical, and scholarly domains. However, the ICTY, ICTR, and ICC have all prosecuted acts falling under this umbrella, primarily as: Crimes against humanity (e.g., deportation, persecution, and extermination), war crimes (e.g., forcible transfer of populations), or genocide, when accompanied by specific intent (dolus specialis). Thus, while not a legal charge in itself, ethnic cleansing remains analytically valuable as a framework for describing patterns of violence and dispossession that target populations on the basis of ethnic or religious identity.
In examining whether the situation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank meets the UN Commission’s definition, we must address three core elements: (a) intentional policy, (b) ethno-religious targeting, and (c) coercive or violent means.
Ad a) A wealth of documentation from Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations indicates that a coherent and long-term policy exists to consolidate Israeli control over contested territories. Policies include: Revocation of residency rights for Palestinians in East Jerusalem (over 14,000 since 1967), Zoning restrictions that make Palestinian construction virtually impossible (only ~7% of East Jerusalem land is zoned for Palestinian use), State-sanctioned demolitions of homes built without permits (which are rarely granted), Declaration of “closed military zones” or nature reserves on Palestinian land, Promotion of settlement expansion and settler relocation with state subsidies. These actions are not isolated but embedded in municipal planning documents and demographic strategies aimed at preserving a Jewish majority in areas of geopolitical and religious importance.
Ad b) The policies in question disproportionately affect Palestinians as an ethno-national group, distinguished from Israeli Jews in both legal status and practical treatment. This is evident in: the dual legal regime applied in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers are governed under civil law, while Palestinians are subjected to military law; eviction proceedings in East Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, often justified using laws that allow Jews to reclaim pre-1948 property but deny reciprocal claims to Palestinians; statements by Israeli officials and planners that explicitly discuss demographic threats and the need to “Judaize” contested areas.
Ad c) Although the intensity of violence varies, Palestinians in these areas live under a regime of structural coercion. Key elements include: night raids, arbitrary arrests, and military presence that create a pervasive atmosphere of fear; settler violence (which has exponentially increased), often tolerated or supported by Israeli forces, which contributes to a climate of intimidation; psychological warfare in the form of unpredictability, surveillance, and legal harassment; infrastructural neglect, which makes life increasingly unlivable for Palestinians while incentivizing their departure. The effect is not only physical displacement but social and existential exhaustion, what some scholars call “slow violence”—a chronic erosion of the conditions for life and community.
Given these elements, it is reasonable—especially in public discourse and normative scholarship—to argue that Israeli state practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem exhibit the defining characteristics of ethnic cleansing as per the UN’s 1993 working definition. This argument is strengthened by: Comparative analysis with cases like Bosnia (e.g., silent or gradual transfers, demographic engineering, and property laws as instruments of displacement), statements from organizations such as B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, which have described the situation as one of apartheid, persecution, and forcible transfer, a visible pattern of territorial fragmentation, legal asymmetry, and population replacement that serves long-term nationalist goals.
It is worth noting that the charge of ethnic cleansing does not require mass killing; it centers on coercive removal from space and the transformation of demography by force or fear. In this sense, the situation in Palestine may reflect a “bureaucratized form of ethnic cleansing”—less overt than 1990s Bosnia, but no less effective in reshaping the human geography of the land.
Ethnic cleansing remains a contested but indispensable category for naming and resisting systematic dispossession along ethno-religious lines. While lacking formal legal status, the UN Commission’s working definition provides a normative framework that helps elucidate long-term strategies of population management and exclusion. Applied to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly the West Bank and East Jerusalem, this framework captures both the intentionality and structural coercion that underpin Israel’s territorial policy.
Even if western human rights scholars were hesitant to adjudicate these actions as war crimes or crimes against humanity, recognizing them as ethnic cleansing in public discourse is essential for the articulation of international solidarity, historical accountability, and future legal redress. It is also important to stress that ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Territories did not start on October 7th 2023, but already well before that, during the 1930s when Zionist settlers were “given” land by the British colonial government. This accelerated with the Nakba of 1948 and has never stopped ever since.
The very idea of creating a Jewish-majority state – as Vladimir Jabotinsky knew all too well – cannot be realized without violently removing indigenous people from their homes. That is, when someone justifies the Zionist, settler colonial project, this is being done on the basis of accepting the inevitability of ethnic cleansing. This justification can only be deemed unproblematic if one assumes that there is a racial hierarchy which considers ethnic cleansing to be acceptable of this is being performed on behalf of a higher-ranked racial or ethnic group at the expense of a lower-ranked racial or ethnic group. This is the essence of western settler colonialism. The attempt to disconnect the current genocide in Gaza from almost a century of ethnic cleansing by denying the relevance of framing it as part of settler colonialism, exposes many western legal and genocide scholars as well as many other “experts”, as more-than-willing instruments of Hasbara.
Disaffected Sociology 
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