A leading Israeli human rights organisation has accused Israel of carrying out a systematic “elimination project” in the occupied West Bank aimed at dismantling Palestinian society and entrenching permanent Israeli control.
In a major 249-page report published today, B’Tselem argues that Israeli violence, settlement expansion, movement restrictions, economic pressure and attacks on Palestinian political and social life should no longer be viewed as separate policies or isolated human rights abuses.
Instead, the organisation says they form an interconnected system designed to undermine Palestinians’ ability to continue functioning as a people in their homeland.
“At the time of this report’s publication, a broad Israeli assault is underway in the West Bank, rapidly and systematically dismantling all the foundations of Palestinian existence,” the report states.
B’Tselem says the process has accelerated dramatically since Israel’s current government came to power at the end of 2022, and particularly since October 2023.
The Israeli organisation identifies five interconnected elements of what it calls the “mechanism of elimination”: violence and intimidation; restrictions on movement; economic strangulation; social and political destruction; and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover.
“These five domains operate at once and reinforce one another,” the report says.
Subscribe to our newsletter and stay updated on the latest news and updates from around the Muslim world!
Together, B’Tselem argues, they are making ordinary Palestinian life increasingly difficult while expanding and consolidating Jewish-Israeli control over the occupied territory.
More than 1,000 Palestinians killed
Violence and intimidation form a central component of the system identified by B’Tselem.
According to figures compiled by the organisation, Israeli forces and civilians killed 1,087 Palestinians in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2026.
Around a quarter of those killed — 242 — were children, while 21 were women.
B’Tselem argues that the effect of Israeli violence goes far beyond those directly killed or injured because it creates an atmosphere in which Palestinians cannot feel secure in their homes, on the roads or on their land.
“At any moment, Palestinians may be exposed to violence by soldiers or armed settler militias, arrested and imprisoned, subjected to abuse and humiliation, and sometimes even killed,” the report says.
It describes a reality in which military raids, settler attacks, arrests and the threat of violence have become embedded in everyday Palestinian life.
“At any moment, soldiers may break into a home, settlers may arrive at a grazing area, a checkpoint may close without explanation, gunfire may erupt in an ambush or raid, a child may be detained, a person may be arrested or beaten.”
B’Tselem argues that the Gaza genocide has also transformed the level of violence considered acceptable against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Practices previously rarely used there — including airstrikes, large-scale destruction of residential areas and infrastructure, mass displacement and looser open-fire regulations — have become increasingly common since October 2023.
‘Economic strangulation’
The report also devotes significant attention to the Palestinian economy, which B’Tselem argues has been deliberately made dependent on Israel during almost six decades of occupation.
Israel controls or heavily influences Palestinian access to land, water, natural resources, imports and exports, infrastructure, border crossings, employment and tax revenues.
“Since October 2023, Israel’s grip on the Palestinian economy has tightened to the point of full economic strangulation that affects every aspect of life in the West Bank,” the report states.
B’Tselem says Israel’s withholding of Palestinian Authority tax revenues has severely undermined the PA’s ability to pay public-sector workers and provide basic services.
The effects ultimately filter down to ordinary Palestinian families.
“When families cannot pay rent, buy food, repay debts, cultivate land or send their children to school, their ability to sustain the basics of daily life is undermined,” B’Tselem says.
The organisation argues that such economic pressure can eventually push Palestinians into abandoning land or communities without an explicit expulsion order ever being issued.
Smotrich’s ‘Decisive Plan’
B’Tselem identifies Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a particularly important figure in understanding developments in the West Bank.
The report examines his 2017 “Decisive Plan”, which it describes as one of the clearest ideological blueprints for what is now happening.
According to B’Tselem, the plan effectively presents Palestinians with three options: accept Jewish supremacy and relinquish their national aspirations; leave Palestine; or face violent repression if they resist.
The plan has never formally been adopted as Israeli government policy. However, B’Tselem says that since the current government took office, “central elements of its logic have in recent years been translated into policy, budget allocations and practices implemented on the ground.”
Smotrich has acquired extensive powers relating to the administration of the West Bank through his additional position as a minister within Israel’s Ministry of Defence.
B’Tselem says these changes are facilitating settlement expansion, land takeover, demolitions and the gradual transfer of authority over the occupied territory from military to Israeli civilian institutions — effectively advancing de facto annexation.
Palestinian society targeted
The report argues that the Israeli assault is not limited to Palestinian territory and economic life but extends to Palestinian society itself.
Political organisations, universities, student groups, civil society organisations, journalists, activists and demonstrations have faced raids, arrests, surveillance and restrictions.
B’Tselem also points to attacks on Palestinian education.
Following Israeli military operations against refugee camps and cities in the northern West Bank in early 2025, it says around 12,000 displaced Palestinian children spent months in displacement centres without proper access to educational facilities or learning materials.
During the 2024-25 academic year, the UN documented more than 2,000 attacks by Israeli soldiers or settlers affecting Palestinian educational institutions, students and staff, according to figures cited in the report.
B’Tselem says these measures form part of a wider assault on Palestinians’ capacity to maintain institutions, political organisation, collective identity and a shared future.
‘Apartheid regime’
The report is based on approximately 2,000 testimonies collected from Palestinians in the West Bank in recent years, alongside B’Tselem’s field research, work by other organisations and analysis of Israeli legislation, government decisions and official documents.
B’Tselem argues that documenting individual abuses is no longer sufficient because the different policies must be understood as parts of a single system.
The organisation concludes that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank operates within what it describes as an apartheid regime based on the “systematic domination and oppression of Palestinians” and the entrenchment of Jewish supremacy.
It says individual practices documented in the report may constitute crimes under international law, including the crime against humanity of apartheid, forcible transfer and other violations of the laws governing military occupation.
The organisation argues that limited measures against individual violent settlers, removing individual checkpoints or temporarily freezing some settlement construction cannot resolve the underlying problem.
“A regime based on Jewish supremacy, apartheid, and dispossession is illegitimate,” the report concludes. “It cannot be accepted or normalized, nor is it enough merely to reduce some of the violence and dispossession it produces.”
The Israeli regime has not yet publicly responded to B’Tselem’s report. However, it has consistently rejected accusations that it is carrying out apartheid, ethnic cleansing or systematic dispossession in the West Bank, arguing that its military operations and restrictions are necessary for security and counterterrorism.
