B’Tselem Warns of Systematic West Bank Dispossession

An Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, has warned that Israel is carrying out a systematic and accelerated campaign to dismantle Palestinian collective life and establish permanent Jewish-Israeli sovereignty across the occupied West Bank. Its report, titled “The Elimination Project,” argues that policies rooted in a long-standing settler-colonial framework intensified under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after late 2022, particularly following the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on southern Israel. Drawing on approximately 2,000 Palestinian testimonies, the report identifies five interconnected mechanisms. These include the use of Israeli military forces and armed settler militias to create violence and displacement; land seizures and the forced removal of Palestinian communities; restrictions on movement; deliberate economic pressure; and the criminalization of political organizing. B’Tselem says at least 1,107 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank between October 2023 and September 2026, while at least 75 Palestinian communities were forcibly displaced. Armed settlers allegedly took control of more than 1.07 million dunams of land, equivalent to 18 percent of the West Bank, and about 33,000 Palestinians were displaced from northern West Bank refugee camps. The report also cites 925 movement obstacles documented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and says unemployment increased from 13.1 percent in 2022 to more than 31 percent in 2024. B’Tselem further alleges that Israel has arrested at least 60 Palestinian journalists in the West Bank since October 2023. The organization called on the international community to stop treating the reported abuses as isolated incidents, end what it describes as complicity, protect Palestinians, and dismantle Israel’s military rule and apartheid system. Executive Director Yuli Novak said governments must use international law to halt the violence and destruction affecting Palestinian life.

France 24 reports on a new publication by the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem concerning Israeli policies and actions in the occupied West Bank. In its report, titled “The Elimination Project,” B’Tselem argues that several developments in the territory should not be viewed as isolated measures, but as interconnected elements of a broader project intended to undermine the ability of Palestinians to remain and function as a collective people. The organization identifies five linked tactics or policies: violence, ethnic cleansing, restrictions on movement, economic strangulation, and the destruction of Palestinian social and political structures. Taken together, B’Tselem says, these measures contribute to the dismantling of Palestinian existence in the West Bank. The report’s language presents the situation as systematic and structural rather than as a series of unrelated security or administrative decisions. The article is a short video report presented by France 24 correspondent Selina Sykes. It summarizes B’Tselem’s central claims but does not provide additional details from the report, independent verification of the allegations, or a response from Israeli authorities in the supplied text. The report focuses specifically on the occupied West Bank and on the alleged cumulative impact of Israeli policies on Palestinian communities and collective life. The article’s subject is part of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ongoing international debate over occupation, displacement, human rights, and the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. Because the claims are attributed to B’Tselem, they are presented as the organization’s allegations and assessment rather than as independently established findings within the article itself.

NPR reports that B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, says Israel is systematically dismantling the foundations of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank. The group’s latest report argues that Israel’s policies are not isolated abuses but part of an overarching effort to weaken or eliminate Palestinian society. B’Tselem director Yuli Novak says the strategy includes land seizures, movement restrictions, economic pressure, killings, assaults, and displacement, and has intensified since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. According to the report, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past three years. B’Tselem also documents the construction of hundreds of checkpoints and gates that can close villages without notice. Unemployment has exceeded 30%, while tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority have been withheld, contributing to severe economic strain. The effects are also being felt in healthcare. Hazem Mohammad Saladeh, who leads a hospital in Hebron, says the facility cannot fully pay its employees and is struggling to obtain stents and other medical equipment because permits for transporting supplies are delayed or denied. He warns that the Palestinian health sector could collapse. International criticism is increasing. The United Kingdom and other Western countries recently imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, while the U.K. has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called those allegations “outrageous lies,” and the Israeli military later described the B’Tselem report as false and detached from reality. The article places the dispute against Israel’s upcoming election, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a close reelection contest.

Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has accused Israel of pursuing an “elimination project” in the occupied West Bank, aimed at dismantling Palestinian life and transforming the territory into a permanently Jewish-Israeli region. In a report titled “The Elimination Project,” the group says Israeli policy has entered a more aggressive phase, combining settler and military violence, land seizures, movement restrictions, economic pressure, and the destruction of Palestinian social and political structures. B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said the strategy reflects patterns associated with settler-colonial projects and argued that violations are embedded in Israeli state policy rather than limited to individual settlers or specific settlements. Her comments come amid escalating violence and international criticism of Israel’s conduct in the West Bank. The report cites statements by Israeli political and military officials, including senior West Bank commander Avi Bluth, who said Israeli forces were killing at a level not seen since 1967. The organisation welcomed sanctions announced by 12 Western countries, including the UK, against illegal West Bank settlements, but said international governments must impose broader consequences on Israel. Novak argued that condemnation without action enables continued violence and said the war in Gaza should have prompted a fundamental change in international policy. The report was released as Israel prepares for elections expected late next month, at the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s term. Novak warned that a change of government would not necessarily alter Israel’s approach, claiming there is broad consensus across the Israeli-Jewish political spectrum on maintaining control, Jewish supremacy, and the policies pursued in Gaza. B’Tselem based its findings on more than 2,000 testimonies collected over three years. One testimony came from 11-year-old Khaled Bani Odeh, who reportedly witnessed Israeli forces kill his parents and two younger brothers during an attack on the family’s car. Khaled and an older brother survived and were allegedly beaten, interrogated, and forced to sit where they could see the bodies.