B'Tselem Report: Israel Systematically Displacing Palestinians in West Bank, 66 Communities Forced Out Since October 2023

Israeli settlers and soldiers are operating as a unified state system to systematically displace Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, according to a new report from B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. The report, titled "The Elimination Project," documents how violence, movement restrictions, and economic pressure work together to make Palestinian life impossible, forcing communities to leave their land [240932].

The report challenges the common description of "settler violence" as the work of rogue extremists. Instead, it says armed settlers are part of a state system with a clear goal: make life impossible for Palestinians and push them off their land [243458].

Since October 7, 2023, the line between settlers and the state has nearly disappeared. Israel recruited thousands of settlers into armed "emergency squads" and provided them with military training and weapons. Settlement security chiefs now have official power to stop and search Palestinians. The government also made it easier to obtain a gun license [243458].

The result has been more than 700 settler attacks in the six months following October 7. In nearly half of these attacks, the attackers wore uniforms [243458].

Settlers, soldiers, police, and armed settler militias often act as one force. Settlers attack with state-issued weapons while soldiers watch or join in. The army blocks roads or shoots at Palestinians trying to defend their homes [243458].

B'Tselem identifies five mechanisms driving what it calls the elimination project: violence and intimidation; movement restrictions; economic strangulation; social and political destruction; and ethnic cleansing and land appropriation. These methods reinforce one another, cutting Palestinians off from work, services, and social ties while weakening institutions and political life [240932].

The report says the project is not new but has accelerated since late 2022, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed Israel's current government with ministers openly hostile to Palestinians. It has sped up further since October 7, 2023 [240932].

Israel also uses a cheaper tool to take land: small settler farms. With public money, police support, and military backing, these farms slowly seize territory. First, Palestinian shepherds lose access to their land. Then their crops and flocks are damaged. Then come threats and violence [243458].

No formal expulsion order is needed. The state simply makes life impossible, and people leave. After they go, roads, caravans, and new farms appear. Since October 2023, 66 Palestinian communities have been forced out this way [243458].

Those who attack Palestinians face almost no consequences. Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, found that of 1,750 police cases opened against settlers for attacks on Palestinians between 2005 and 2025, only 6.7 percent led to charges. Just 3 percent ended in a conviction. This impunity is not a side effect but what keeps the system working [243458].

According to the report, Israel killed 1,087 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2026. Of those, 242 were children. Thirty-two Palestinians from the occupied West Bank have died in Israeli detention over the same period [240932].

The report also documents Israel's expansion of its prison system as a tool of repression. It has detained elected officials, activists, academics, students, and journalists, raided Palestinian organizations' offices, restricted nonviolent protests, and increased surveillance and arrests linked to social media posts [240932].

B'Tselem points to the "Decisive Plan" presented in 2017 by Bezalel Smotrich, now Israel's finance minister and a key figure in West Bank settlement policy. The plan offers Palestinians three options: live under Jewish supremacy and give up political claims, leave, or face violent repression if they resist. While never formally adopted as government policy, the report warns its core logic has shaped recent policies, budgets, and practices on the ground [240932].

The report says Europe must face a hard truth. Treating Israel as the force that should stop settler violence is a fiction that fuels the violence. The problem is not a state that cannot control extremists but a state that arms, funds, informs, and protects them [243458].

As B'Tselem puts it: the armed settler and the state are not on opposite sides. They are parts of the same machine [243458].