B'Tselem Report Says Israel Pursues Coordinated Campaign To Erase Palestinian Presence In West Bank

An Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, has published a detailed report titled "The Elimination Project", accusing the Israeli government of a coordinated, accelerated campaign to dismantle Palestinian communal life and consolidate permanent Jewish-Israeli control across the occupied West Bank.

The report, released on Monday, draws on roughly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies and outlines five interconnected mechanisms that B'Tselem says are being used to advance this objective. The organisation frames these policies as rooted in a long-term settler-colonial project that, it argues, entered a more aggressive phase under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government from late 2022 and intensified after the October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

"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.

Five Mechanisms Identified

1. Violence and Intimidation: B'Tselem says Israeli military forces and armed settler militias are used to impose violence, fear and coercion on Palestinian communities. The report records that between October 2023 and September 2026, at least 1,107 Palestinians were killed in attacks across the occupied West Bank.

2. Land Seizure and Forcible Displacement: The report documents demolitions, military operations and settler-led takeovers that, it says, force Palestinians from their land to expand a Jewish-Israeli presence. B'Tselem reports at least 75 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced and that settlers now control more than 1,070,000 dunams — roughly 18% of the West Bank as of July 2026. The NGO also cites about 33,000 Palestinians displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank. (A dunam is 1,000 square metres.)

3. Movement Restrictions: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) documented 925 movement obstacles — including roadblocks and unmanned checkpoints — across the territory by the end of last year, B'Tselem reports.

4. Economic Strangulation: B'Tselem contends that Israeli policy has deliberately harmed the West Bank economy. The report highlights a rise in unemployment from 13.1% in 2022 to more than 31% in 2024.

5. Criminalisation of Political Life: The NGO documents suppression of protests and arrests of activists, students and journalists. It notes that since the start of the Gaza conflict in October 2023 — described in the report as a "genocidal war on Gaza" — at least 60 Palestinian journalists working in the occupied West Bank have been detained.

Calls To Action

B'Tselem urges the international community not to treat these incidents as isolated events and to end what it calls complicity in Israeli actions. The organisation calls for immediate measures to protect Palestinians and for international institutions and states to use available tools under international law to halt the reported abuses and the structures B'Tselem describes as military rule and an 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," 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."

This report presents B'Tselem's findings and interpretations. Its claims are contested in wider international and Israeli political debate, and readers should be aware that other organisations and governments may characterise the situation differently.