Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – Palestinians residing in the occupied West Bank routinely endure numerous instances of what seem like isolated Israeli acts of violence and suppression.
In early September, Israeli forces fatally shot two teenagers during a military operation in al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah. Days later, in Masafer Yatta, Israeli forces demolished every structure in Khirbet al-Tabban, displacing approximately 70 individuals, including 30 children. Meanwhile, in Qusra, south of Nablus, settler violence has besieged three families within their homes for over a month, cutting off essential water and power supplies.
A newly published report by the Israeli rights organization B’Tselem contends that these are not isolated occurrences. Collectively, they serve a singular objective: rendering Palestinian life on the land unsustainable and establishing permanent Israeli dominance. According to the group, the situation in the West Bank represents “neither a temporary crisis nor a series of random human rights violations.”
Rather, it constitutes “an accelerated and explicit phase within an ongoing project of elimination, operating under the Israeli apartheid regime and driven by a settler-colonial logic of dispossession, displacement, and the establishment of Jewish-Israeli sovereignty,” the publication—titled The Elimination Project—asserted.
‘The Elimination Project’
Drawing on nearly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies, the report reveals that seemingly disparate Israeli violations form part of what it terms “a comprehensive mechanism of elimination.”
By “elimination,” B’Tselem refers to the systematic dismantling of Palestinian society, which erodes its institutions, economy, freedom of movement, and social fabric.
The report frames this within the “basic logic of settler colonialism”: establishing “permanent settler sovereignty over a territory already inhabited by an Indigenous people” by “pushing them out, dispossessing them, and dismantling their collective existence.”
It identifies five interconnected fronts driving this process: violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover.
B’Tselem traces this logic to the 2017 “Decisive Plan” authored by Bezalel Smotrich, currently Israel’s finance minister. The group asserts that this plan presented Palestinians with three options: accept Jewish supremacy while relinquishing national claims, leave, or face violent suppression.
The report argues that none of this is new; the mechanism has operated for decades. What has shifted is its severity and explicitness, escalating significantly since the far-right government assumed office in late 2022 and accelerating sharply following the commencement of the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
The reality on the ground
For approximately 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, this system manifests as a steady contraction of daily life: roads they cannot access, land they cannot reach, and dwindling safe spaces to live, work, and move.
By December 2025, Israel had erected at least 925 physical obstacles across the West Bank, the highest number recorded by the United Nations in two decades.
Yusef Kashur, a driver and father of six from Dura, south of Hebron, told B’Tselem that the expanding network of gates and checkpoints has turned his work into a “torment.” He is forced onto long, hazardous backroads and must decline fares he previously relied upon.
“These drives are exhausting, take a very long time, and the fuel costs are so exorbitant that I cannot earn enough to cover our household needs,” he stated.
These restrictions precipitate a broader economic collapse. Under an occupation that dictates borders, trade, and revenue, the West Bank economy has little autonomy and has buckled. Unemployment at the end of last year roughly doubled to 27.5 percent compared to October 2023, driven in part by the freezing of work permits for approximately 115,000 Palestinians.
The report argues this squeeze is deliberate: a family unable to earn is easier to uproot, and when Palestinians retreat to their own land, the pressure follows them there.
After losing his job inside Israel, Jamil Abu Rayan turned to his grapevines near Halhul, only to discover settlers had established an illegal outpost on his primary plot. Soldiers also barred him from another plot, designating it “[Israeli] state land.”
He told B’Tselem he lost approximately 60 percent of his 2025 grape harvest and can no longer properly cultivate his land.
Recounting a late January attack in the South Hebron Hills, where entire communities face forced displacement, Isma’il Khalayleh told the rights group earlier this year that a settler pressed a rifle to his forehead and issued a deadline: “I’m giving you 24 hours to leave this place.”
According to the Israeli settlement-watchdog group Peace Now, agricultural and grazing outposts have “violently taken control” of nearly 20 percent of the West Bank. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,600 settler attacks last year.
This same pressure extends to construction; Israeli authorities make it “virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits,” according to OCHA, leaving families who build without permits under constant threat of demolition.
As Palestinian communities are cleared, illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand. The current government has approved a record 104 new settlements since 2022.
The suppression also targets the institutions that sustain Palestinian society. B’Tselem has documented a series of raids and closure orders directed at charities, trade unions, and universities.
Ahmad Dweikat told the rights group that in May 2026, soldiers ransacked a Nablus association he co-founded to assist women, children, and families, confiscating computers and cash, including funds designated for orphans.
Underpinning all of this is the military’s lethal force. B’Tselem counted approximately 1,087 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023, roughly a quarter of them children.
Among the victims was Jamil Hanani, a 17-year-old boy from Beit Furik who was shot during an army raid on the town. “It’s as if they go out hunting, only they’re hunting human beings,” his father, ‘Atef Hanani, told B’Tselem.
The system behind the violence
For years, foreign governments have urged Israel to exercise restraint. B’Tselem argues that this framing misses the point: the violence, closures, and demolitions are not failures of the system, but the system functioning exactly as intended.
Sanctioning an individual settler, reopening a road, or freezing a single settlement plan would “leave intact the structure that produces violence, dispossession, and oppression,” it stated.
Viewed through this lens, the question is not whether each individual act constitutes an isolated violation, but what they collectively produce: a steadily shrinking space for Palestinians to live, work, build, and remain on their land.
The report argues that the West Bank cannot be understood in isolation from Gaza. The two are “different manifestations of the same regime project, directed against Palestinians’ ability to exist as a people.”
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