The former Israeli premier decried his country's actions and policy in the West Bank just as the Israeli government announced radical plans to exert control of even more Palestinian territory.
Former Prime Minister Olmert has told Euronews Israel is responsible for the ongoing violence in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have attacked and displaced Palestinians from their homes.
“No one can blame anyone else but the Israelis that live in the West Bank and the government that supports them, who are perpetrating the hostilities inhuman against non-involved Palestinians”, Olmert told the Europe Today show from his home in Tel Aviv.
“This is something that comes close to an attempt to make ethnic cleansing", he said. "And I speak up everywhere I can in the loudest voice I have in order to condemn it, because this is not something which is tolerable or which is acceptable by people that have different values of humanity and compassion.”
Settler activities against Palestinians have increased since Hamas launched a massive attack on Israelis from Gaza on 7 October 2023.
In 2025, a total of 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed in the West Bank. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 225 were killed by Israeli forces and nine by Israeli settlers; in six cases, the identity of the killers remains uncertain.
In its Humanitarian Update on the West Bank, OCHA also reports that in 2025, more than 830 Palestinians were injured by Israeli settlers in settler attacks, an average of two people injured per day.
Israeli authorities also forcibly evicted two Palestinian families from their homes in the Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood in the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem in favour of an Israeli settler organisation.
Meanwhile, the Israeli security cabinet has announced new measures which would “dramatically” change land registration and procedures required to own land in the West Bank in a bid to clear the way for Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The decisions “are intended to remove decades-old barriers, repeal discriminatory Jordanian legislation, and enable accelerated development of settlement on the ground”, Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement on Sunday.
“We will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state”, said Smotrich.