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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Monday accused Israel of pursuing a coordinated set of policies that it says are aimed at erasing the Palestinian presence in the occupied West Bank and establishing a permanent Israeli-Jewish presence and sovereignty in the territory.
In a statement, the group said Israel was simultaneously using five interconnected mechanisms to dismantle the collective Palestinian presence: violence and terror, ethnic cleansing and takeover of space, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and a political framework.
B’Tselem said Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank had entered a new phase at the end of 2022, marked by increasingly overt and accelerated policies of control, violence and dispossession. "What Palestinians in the West Bank are experiencing is part of a single political project that permeates every aspect of life," B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said.
Novak added that Palestinian communities were being displaced, the economy was being pushed toward collapse and millions of people were living in constant fear of violence by the Israeli army or occupiers.
According to B’Tselem, the first mechanism is "violence and terror," involving Israeli forces and armed occupiers intimidating Palestinians and using violence and coercion.
The group said Israel killed 1,107 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 245 children, between Oct. 7, 2023 and Aug. 31, 2026. The second is "ethnic cleansing and takeover of space," involving Palestinian displacement and the expansion of the Israeli-Jewish presence.
B’Tselem said Israel had displaced 75 Palestinian communities, while outposts and farms established by occupiers had taken control of 1.07 million dunams, or about 264,400 acres, equal to 18% of the occupied West Bank. Around 33,000 Palestinians had also been forcibly displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.
The third is "economic strangulation." B’Tselem says Israel uses its control over jobs, tax revenues, the financial system and infrastructure to deepen the economic crisis and Palestinian dependence on Israel.
Palestinian Finance Minister Estephan Salameh warned in July that Israel was moving toward completely withholding clearance revenues, which account for around 56% of the Palestinian Authority’s total public revenues.
Israel began deducting portions of the funds in 2019 and stopped transferring them entirely about a year ago. Withheld revenues exceeded $6 billion, deepening the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis and leaving it unable to pay public servants’ full salaries.
B’Tselem identified "social and political destruction" as the fourth mechanism, saying Israel criminalized attempts at political affiliation, raided and shut down civil society organizations, suppressed protests, and arrested activists, students and journalists.
The group said Israel had detained at least 60 Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. Palestinian figures put the overall number of Palestinians detained there during the same period at more than 25,000, including journalists, students and activists.
The fifth mechanism was what B’Tselem described as the "political framework," which it linked to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s 2017 "Decisive Plan."
According to the group, the plan sought to make Israeli-Jewish sovereignty irreversible through settlement expansion, land seizures and Palestinian displacement, leaving Palestinians with three options: accepting Jewish supremacy, leaving, or facing military repression.
Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office in late 2022, Israeli authorities have intensified settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, approving 104 new settlements, according to the report.
Since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have also intensified attacks across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, involving killings, arrests, displacement, home demolitions and settlement expansion.
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