B'Tselem warns of accelerated campaign to erase Palestinian presence in the occupied West Bank

An Israeli human rights group has accused Israel of carrying out a systematic and accelerated campaign to dismantle Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank. B'Tselem said the effort is aimed at establishing permanent Jewish-Israeli sovereignty across the territory. The group published its report, titled The Elimination Project, on Monday.

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The report says the campaign has intensified since late 2022, and especially after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023. B'Tselem executive director Yuli Novak said Palestinians in the West Bank are not facing isolated incidents, but what she described as a single political project reaching into every part of life. The report says it draws on roughly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies.

B'Tselem said Israel is using military forces and armed settler militias to impose violence, fear and coercion. It also said the army is carrying out military operations and demolitions, while helping armed settlers drive Palestinians from their land. According to the report, at least 1,107 Palestinians were killed in attacks across the occupied West Bank between October 2023 and September 2026.

The report also says at least 75 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced. It says armed settlers have taken control of more than 1,070,000 dunams of land, which it said amounts to 18% of the West Bank as of July 2026. The group also said about 33,000 Palestinians have been displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

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The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented 925 movement obstacles, including roadblocks and unmanned checkpoints. The findings add to long-running international concern over the future of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlement expansion, movement restrictions and repeated military operations have remained central points of dispute. The report frames the current period as part of a broader settler-colonial framework, but says the pace has increased under Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

That makes the issue politically significant as pressure grows over the scale of displacement, land control and restrictions on Palestinian movement. The report does not resolve the underlying legal and political disputes over the territory, and its allegations are likely to draw strong responses from Israeli officials and supporters of settlement policy. What remains unclear from the report alone is how the government will respond to the claims and whether the figures it cites will be independently verified in full.

The next developments to watch are any official Israeli reaction, further scrutiny of the displacement figures and whether the reported pattern of violence and demolitions continues.

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