Jerusalem: Israeli human rights group B'Tselem on Monday accused Israel of seeking to erase the Palestinian presence in the occupied West Bank through a series of interconnected policies aimed at reshaping the territory.
According to Anadolu Agency, the group stated that Israel is employing five mechanisms that reinforce one another to dismantle the collective Palestinian presence and establish a permanent and contiguous Israeli-Jewish presence and sovereignty in the territory. B'Tselem highlighted that Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank entered a new phase at the end of 2022, characterized by increasingly overt and accelerated measures of control, violence, and dispossession.
B'Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak emphasized that Palestinian communities are being displaced, the economy is being pushed toward collapse, and millions of people live in constant fear of violence by the Israeli army or occupiers. The first mechanism identified by B'Tselem is "violence and terror," involving the use of Israeli forces and armed occupiers to intimidate Palestinians and impose violence and coercion. The group reported that Israel killed 1,107 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 245 children, between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2026.
The second mechanism is "ethnic cleansing and takeover of space," which involves displacing Palestinians from their land while expanding the Israeli-Jewish presence. B'Tselem noted that Israel has displaced 75 Palestinian communities to date, while occupiers have taken control of 1.07 million dunams (about 264,400 acres), equivalent to 18% of the occupied West Bank. Additionally, around 33,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.
The third mechanism, termed "economic strangulation," involves Israel's control over Palestinian employment opportunities, tax revenues, the financial system, and infrastructure, deepening the economic crisis and Palestinian dependence on Israel. Palestinian Finance Minister Estephan Salameh warned that Israel is moving toward completely withholding Palestinian clearance revenues, which account for around 56% of the Palestinian Authority's total public revenues. Israel has been withholding these revenues since 2019, exacerbating the Palestinian Authority's financial crisis.
B'Tselem identified "social and political destruction" as the fourth mechanism, highlighting how Israel criminalizes political affiliation, raids and shuts down civil society organizations, suppresses protests, and arrests activists, students, and journalists. The group reported that Israel has detained at least 60 Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, with Palestinian figures indicating more than 25,000 detentions during the same period.
The fifth mechanism, described as the "political framework," links to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's 2017 "Decisive Plan." The plan aims to make Israeli-Jewish sovereignty irreversible through settlement expansion, land seizures, and Palestinian displacement, leaving Palestinians with limited options. 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. Since the start of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, attacks have intensified across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.