On any given week, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank can experience dozens of what appear to be isolated acts of Israeli violence and suppression.
asserted
what → give → violence
In early September, Israeli forces killed two teenagers during a military raid in al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah.
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forces → kill → Ramallah
Days later in Masafer Yatta, Israeli forces demolished every home in Khirbet al-Tabban, leaving about 70 people, including 30 children, without shelter.
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forces → demolish → shelter
In Qusra, south of Nablus, settlers have kept three families under siege inside their homes for more than a month, cutting off their water and power.
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settlers → keep → water
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NGO → threaten → Bank
In a new report published on Monday, Israeli rights group B’Tselem argued these are not separate incidents.
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these → publish → Monday
Together, they work towards a single end: Making Palestinian life on the land unsustainable and replacing it with permanent Israeli control.
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life → work → control
The reality in the West Bank, the group said, is “neither a temporary crisis nor a collection of random human rights violations”.
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group → say → violations
Instead, it is “an accelerated and explicit phase in an ongoing project of elimination that operates within the Israeli apartheid regime and is driven by a settler-colonial logic of dispossession, displacement, and the establishment of Jewish-Israeli sovereignty”, the publication – called The Elimination Project – added.
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publication → operate → sovereignty
Drawing on nearly 2,000 Palestinian testimonies, the report said that seemingly separate Israeli violations are part of what it called “a comprehensive mechanism of elimination”.
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it → draw → elimination
By “elimination”, B’Tselem referred to the systematic dismantling of Palestinian society, eroding its institutions, economy, freedom of movement and social life.
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B’Tselem → refer → movement
The report placed this within what it called the “basic logic of settler colonialism”: Establishing “permanent settler sovereignty over a territory already inhabited by an Indigenous people” by “pushing them out, dispossessing them and dismantling their collective existence”.
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it → place → existence
It identifies five interconnected fronts through which that process operates: Violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover.
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process → identify → which
B’Tselem traced that logic to the 2017 “Decisive Plan” authored by Bezalel Smotrich, now Israel’s finance minister.
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B’Tselem → trace → Smotrich
The plan, the group said, gave Palestinians three choices: Accept Jewish supremacy while giving up their national claims, leave, or face violent suppression.
uncertain
group → say → suppression
None of this is new, the report argued; the mechanism has run for decades.
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mechanism → argue → decades
What has changed is that it has grown far more severe and open, escalating since the current far-right government took office in late 2022 and sharply after the start of the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
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government → change → October
The reality on the ground
For roughly 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, that system is felt in the steady narrowing of daily life: Roads they cannot use, land they cannot reach, and fewer places where they can safely live, work and move.
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they → occupy → life
By December 2025, Israel had at least 925 physical obstacles set up across the West Bank, the most the United Nations has recorded in two decades.
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Nations → have → decades
Yusef Kashur, a driver and father of six from Dura, south of Hebron, told B’Tselem that the growing network of gates and checkpoints had turned his work into a “torment”, forcing him onto long, dangerous backroads and to turn down fares he once relied on.
“These drives are exhausting, take a very long time, and the fuel costs so much that I don’t make enough to cover our household needs,” he said.
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he → tell → needs
The restrictions feed a wider collapse.
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restrictions → feed → collapse
Under an occupation that controls its borders, trade and revenue, the West Bank economy has little room of its own, and it has buckled: Unemployment at the end of last year had roughly doubled to 27.5 percent compared to October 2023, driven in part by the freezing of work permits for about 115,000 Palestinians.
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Unemployment → control → Palestinians
The squeeze is deliberate, the report argued: A family that cannot earn is easier to uproot, and when Palestinians fall back on their own land, the pressure follows them there.
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pressure → argue → them
After losing his job inside Israel, Jamil Abu Rayan turned to his grapevines near Halhul, only to find settlers had established an illegal outpost at his main plot.
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settlers → lose → plot
Soldiers also barred him from another plot, calling it “[Israeli] state land”.
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Soldiers → bar → it
He told B’Tselem he lost about 60 percent of his 2025 grape harvest and that he can no longer properly work his land.
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he → tell → land
Recounting a late January attack in the South Hebron Hills, where entire communities face forcible displacement, Isma’il Khalayleh told the rights group earlier this year that a settler pressed a rifle to his forehead and gave him a deadline: “I’m giving you 24 hours to leave this place.”
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I → recount → place
Agricultural and grazing outposts have “violently taken control” of nearly 20 percent of the West Bank, according to Israeli settlement-watchdog group Peace Now.
uncertain
outposts → take → Now
More than 1,600 settler attacks were recorded by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) last year.
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attacks → record → Affairs
The same pressure extends to where Palestinians can build; Israeli authorities make it “virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits”, according to OCHA, leaving many families who build without them under constant threat of Israeli demolition.
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who → extend → demolition
As Palestinian communities are cleared, more illegal Israeli settlements expand.
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settlements → clear → ?
The current government has approved a record 104 new settlements since 2022.
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government → approve → 2022
The suppression also extends to the institutions that hold Palestinian society together, with B’Tselem documenting a series of raids and closure orders faced by charities, trade unions and universities.
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B’Tselem → extend → charities
Ahmad Dweikat told the rights group that in May 2026, soldiers ransacked a Nablus association he co-founded to help women, children and families, confiscating computers and cash, including money set aside for orphans.
uncertain
he → tell → orphans
Running beneath all of it is the military’s lethal force.
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force → run → it
B’Tselem counted about 1,087 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023, roughly a quarter of them children.
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quarter → count → them
Among them was Jamil Hanani, a 17-year-old boy from Beit Furik who was shot during an army raid on the town.
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who → shoot → town
“It’s as if they go out hunting, only they’re hunting human beings,” his father, ‘Atef Hanani, told B’Tselem.
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father → ’ → B’Tselem
The system behind the violence
For years, foreign governments have urged Israel to show restraint.
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governments → urge → restraint
That framing misses the point, B’Tselem argued: The violence, closures and demolitions are not failures of the system, but the system working as intended.
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system → miss → system
…and 4 more, not listed.
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