Israel working to eliminate Palestinian presence from West Bank, NGO warns

Israel is executing a systematic and accelerated campaign to dismantle “Palestinian collective life” and establish permanent Jewish-Israeli sovereignty across the occupied West Bank, an Israeli human rights group has warned.

The “Elimination Project”, published on Monday by B’Tselem, details several tactics used by the Israeli government to help it achieve its overall objective of “erasing the Palestinian presence” from the occupied West Bank.

The report argues that while Israeli policies have been rooted in a long-term settler colonial framework, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has entered an accelerated phase of this objective since late 2022, particularly after the Hamas-led October 2023 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.

The report outlines five interconnected mechanisms Israel uses to advance its West Bank project, drawing from roughly 2,000 testimonies given by Palestinians.

Firstly, Israel is “using military forces and armed settler militias to impose violence, fear and coercion”, according to the report.

Between October 2023 and September 2026, Israel killed at least 1,107 Palestinians in attacks across the occupied West Bank, the NGO said.

The Israeli army uses military operations and demolitions and assists armed settlers in driving Palestinians from their land to expand its presence in the territory, the report said.

To date, at least 75 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced, it said. Israel has, via armed settlers, taken control of more than 1,070,000 dunams of land, equivalent to 18 percent of the West Bank as of July, 2026, it said. A dunam is a unit of land area commonly used in the region, equal to 1,000 square meters (about 0.247 acres or 0.1 hectare). Furthermore, about 33,000 Palestinians have been displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

Israel also actively restricts Palestinians’ movement, with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documenting 925 movement obstacles, including roadblocks and unmanned checkpoints, throughout the territory by the end of last year.

The Israeli government has purposefully stifled the West Bank’s economy , with unemployment rising from 13.1 percent in 2022 to more than 31 percent in 2024.

Lastly, Israel actively criminalises political organising, suppressing protests and arresting activists, students and journalists.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, it has arrested at least 60 Palestinian journalists working in the occupied West Bank.

B’Tselem urged the international community to stop viewing Israel’s violations as isolated incidents and to end complicity in its actions.

It also called for immediate global 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,” said Novak.

“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.”