B'Tselem Report Alleges Systematic Israeli Project to Undermine Palestinian Life in West Bank

An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the government of pursuing a deliberate and accelerating programme to dismantle the foundations of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank, describing the situation as an "elimination project."

At a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Yuli Novk, executive director of B'Tselem, said the group had produced a new report because examining individual incidents separately no longer conveyed the scale of what is taking place. Novk said that over nearly three years Israel has been systematically eroding the conditions that allow Palestinians to sustain collective existence in the territory, while making Israeli control and Jewish presence increasingly permanent.

The report alleges that actions by settlers and the military are intended to undermine Palestinian communal life and to entrench what it calls a permanent system of Jewish supremacy across the West Bank. It further claims that these actions depend on open cooperation between state authorities and armed settlers, who attack Palestinian communities with weapons and vehicles provided by the state, while the military either fails to intervene or in some cases takes part.

According to the report, Israel had by July taken control of more than 264,402 acres — roughly 107,000 hectares, or nearly a fifth of the West Bank — through what it describes as armed settler militias. Most of the international community considers Israeli settlements in the territory illegal.

Novk said recent measures by the United Kingdom and other governments were significant because they marked a shift from condemnation towards consequences, but argued that responses limited to settlements alone would be insufficient. The violations described, Novk said, are funded, protected and embedded in Israeli state policy and carried out within a system of broad impunity.

Novk also said the war in Gaza should have fundamentally altered international policy towards the Israeli government, but had not, and that the same impunity is now enabling the destruction of Palestinian collective life in the West Bank. Novk rejected the idea that replacing the current Israeli government would resolve the situation, saying the administration inherited a violent political system built by successive governments over decades and had pushed it faster, more violently and more openly than before.

The group called on states and international institutions to use every means available under international law to halt the alleged crimes, protect Palestinians and stop what it termed the elimination project, warning that the developments are occurring now rather than being a future possibility.