An Israeli human rights group has warned of an accelerated campaign to dismantle Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank and establish permanent Jewish-Israeli sovereignty across the territory.
B’Tselem’s report, titled “The Elimination Project”, alleges that the Israeli government is using interconnected policies to erase the Palestinian presence from the West Bank.
The organisation said the approach was rooted in a long-term settler colonial framework but had intensified since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government came to power in late 2022, particularly after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
“What Palestinians are living through in the West Bank is not a series of separate incidents. It is a single political project that reaches into every part of life,” said B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak.
Violence, displacement and restrictions
Drawing on roughly 2,000 testimonies from Palestinians, the report describes the use of military forces and armed settler militias to impose violence, fear and coercion.
B’Tselem said at least 1,107 Palestinians had been killed in attacks across the occupied West Bank between October 2023 and September 2026. It also alleged that military operations, demolitions and support for armed settlers had been used to drive Palestinians from their land and expand Israel’s presence.
At least 75 Palestinian communities had been forcibly displaced, the group said. Armed settlers had taken control of more than 1.07 million dunams of land – equivalent to 18 per cent of the West Bank as of July 2026 – while about 33,000 Palestinians had been displaced from refugee camps in the territory’s north.
The report also points to restrictions on movement. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded 925 obstacles, including roadblocks and unmanned checkpoints, across the West Bank by the end of last year.
B’Tselem said the Palestinian economy had also been deliberately weakened, with unemployment rising from 13.1 per cent in 2022 to more than 31 per cent in 2024.
It further accused Israel of criminalising political organising by suppressing protests and arresting activists, students and journalists. Since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023, at least 60 Palestinian journalists working in the occupied West Bank had been arrested, it said.
Call for international action
B’Tselem urged governments and international institutions to stop treating Israel’s alleged violations as isolated incidents and to end what it described as complicity in the policies.
The group called for immediate international action to protect Palestinians and dismantle Israel’s military rule and apartheid system.
“Palestinians are being left exposed to escalating violence while Israel advances its project of elimination in the West Bank. Governments cannot condemn these crimes while granting Israel the impunity to continue,” Ms Novak said.
“Together with international institutions, they must use every means available under international law to stop Israel’s crimes and halt the machinery of violence and destruction that is tearing Palestinian life apart.”
