B'Tselem Report Accuses Israel of Systematic Erasure of Palestinian Life in West Bank

An Israeli human rights organization has accused Israeli authorities of running a coordinated campaign to dismantle Palestinian life across the occupied West Bank, describing military violence, movement restrictions, economic pressure and land seizures as parts of a single, deliberate strategy.

The organization, B'Tselem, published its findings in a report titled "The Elimination Project." The group said the pattern of policy intensified after the current Israeli governing coalition, which includes far-right parties, took office at the end of 2022, and accelerated further from October 2023 onward.

According to the report, ordinary activities such as commuting to work, taking children to school, attending university, seeking medical care, visiting relatives, farming land, traveling or attending cultural events have become subject to constant interference or outright denial for Palestinian residents of the territory.

B'Tselem said Palestinians in the occupied territory also live under persistent threat to their safety, facing the possibility of violence from soldiers or armed settlers, arrest, detention, mistreatment, humiliation and, in some cases, death, at any time.

The organization characterized the situation as an assault "both against the individual and against the collective" of Palestinians, saying roughly 3.5 million people are caught in an ongoing struggle against dispossession and repression imposed by what it called the Israeli regime.

"What Palestinians in the West Bank are living through is not a series of separate incidents. It is a single political project that reaches into every part of life," B'Tselem executive director Yuli Novak said, according to the Arabic television network Al Jazeera.

The report concludes that the overarching goal of Israeli policy is to eliminate collective Palestinian life in the West Bank and to establish permanent Israeli sovereignty over the territory. B'Tselem identified five interlinked mechanisms it says are used to pursue that goal: violence and intimidation, restrictions on movement, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing paired with territorial takeover.

The report states that the Israeli military and armed groups it describes as settler militias are used to enforce violence, fear and coercion among Palestinian communities. Between October 2023 and September 2026, B'Tselem said, Israeli forces killed at least 1,107 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The group also said at least 75 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced, and that armed settlers, with state backing, now control about 18 percent of the West Bank as of July 2026.

The report also documents extensive restrictions on Palestinian movement. Citing United Nations figures, B'Tselem said 925 obstacles to movement, including roadblocks and unmanned checkpoints, had been documented across the territory by the end of last year.

Economic conditions have deteriorated sharply, the report says. Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank rose from 13.1 percent in 2022 to more than 31 percent in 2024. B'Tselem said Israel has obstructed independent Palestinian economic development since 1967 by channeling Palestinian labor into the Israeli job market, controlling natural resources and border crossings, and blocking the expansion of local infrastructure, industry and trade.

The report further alleges that Israeli authorities have criminalized Palestinian political organizing, suppressed protests, and carried out arrests of activists, students and journalists.

B'Tselem said its conclusions draw on decades of documented Israeli policy affecting Palestinian rights in the West Bank, combined with an analysis of current government actions. The organization said it incorporated roughly 2,000 testimonies collected in recent years from Palestinians living in the territory, along with reviews of official documents, legislation, government decisions and previous reports.

The report does not include a response from the Israeli government or military to its specific findings.