B’Tselem says West Bank policies form system of permanent control
The Israeli rights group’s report draws on nearly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies and links settlement expansion, displacement, restrictions and violence.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem has published a report arguing that settlement expansion, displacement, movement restrictions, economic pressure and violence across the occupied West Bank are interconnected parts of a decades-old system. It says the system is making Palestinian life unsustainable while entrenching permanent Israeli control.
The report, The Elimination Project, draws on nearly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies and identifies five fronts: violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. B’Tselem characterises these developments as a coordinated process rather than a series of isolated incidents.
B’Tselem links the framework to the 2017 “Decisive Plan” associated with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. It says the process intensified after Israel’s far-right government took office in late 2022 and escalated after October 2023.
Figures cited by the report include approximately 1,087 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023, about one-quarter of them children. The United Nations recorded approximately 925 physical obstacles across the West Bank by December 2025, while unemployment stood at about 27.5 per cent at the end of that year.
The report also cites more than 1,600 settler attacks recorded by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in 2025. Peace Now, an Israeli settlement-monitoring group, said agricultural and grazing outposts had taken control of nearly 20 per cent of the West Bank, according to the cited material.
B’Tselem says demolitions, settlement expansion, restrictions on access to land and raids on Palestinian institutions are steadily narrowing the space available for Palestinians to live, work and remain on their land. The claims and figures were not independently verified in the supplied material, which does not include a response from the Israeli government or military.
