The report, titled the Elimination Project, says the Israeli regime has dramatically intensified attacks on Palestinian life, restricting access to work, education, medical care, municipal services, family, farmland and other basic activities.
B’Tselem says the campaign is governed by a “coherent organizing logic” encompassing violence and intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, and ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover.
According to the report, various arms of the Israeli regime, led in civilian matters in the West Bank by far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, are seeking to create conditions in which Palestinians live under constant fear of Israeli military and civilian violence.
“Palestinian communities are being pushed out in an accelerating process of ethnic cleansing, while an ever-expanding Israeli presence is being established in their place in the form of settlements, outposts, farms and Jewish-only civilian infrastructure,” the report says.
It describes the policy as an ongoing effort to make Palestinian existence fragmented, vulnerable and dependent while consolidating and permanently expanding Israeli settlements and infrastructure.
Since October 2023, 1,107 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the West Bank, while 64 entire Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced, according to figures cited by B’Tselem.
Movement restrictions are among the most visible elements of the campaign.
In one example cited by the report, Haytham Adnan Murad, 49, was forced to carry his 12-year-old daughter around an Israeli army roadblock after a gate leading to his village was closed following their return from a hospital appointment.
“When we left, the gate was open. Now it’s closed, but this is daily life,” he said. “In the morning, things are different from the afternoon. There’s no dignity in this.”
B’Tselem says the Israeli regime’s intensified campaign in the West Bank reflects an ideological project that predates the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, with its foundations rooted in a long-standing drive to impose Jewish supremacy, expand settlements and systematically undermine the conditions necessary for Palestinian collective existence.
The report identifies this ideological framework as central to understanding the Israeli regime’s policies, arguing that the post-October 2023 escalation represents an acceleration and expansion of an established project rather than a fundamentally new course of action.
The group identifies Smotrich’s 2017 Decisive Plan as a key document for understanding Israeli criminal actions in the West Bank, saying it effectively offered Palestinians the choice of accepting Jewish supremacy, leaving the territory or facing military suppression.
The report says the plan has since been translated into “policy, budgets, powers and practices” with unprecedented speed and openness.
Meanwhile, B’Tselem says settler violence has increasingly become part of a broader system of Israeli control, sometimes occurring alongside soldiers and with state-provided weapons, equipment and infrastructure.
The Israeli regime has also imposed what B’Tselem describes as “full economic strangulation” since 2023, restricting livelihoods, damaging civilian and agricultural infrastructure, tightening control over resources and undermining public services.
West Bank unemployment rose from 13.1% in 2022 to 31.3% in 2024, while nearly half of young people in 2025 were neither employed nor enrolled in education or vocational training.
The report also documents intensified pressure on Palestinian organizations, schools and community institutions, including raids, forced closures, arrests and harassment.
Kareem Jubran, head of B’Tselem’s field research on the West Bank, said: “What we uncovered is that these are not separate incidents. All the disparate elements have one character, one goal. When you look at the picture from above, it leads to one conclusion: that the main goal is to eliminate Palestinians as a collective.”
Yuli Novak, executive director of B’Tselem, said the Israeli campaign had entered a new phase, making the West Bank “more and more unlivable for many Palestinians.”
“All data and figures provided by B’Tselem.”