Israel trying to 'eliminate' living conditions for Palestinians in occupied West Bank, says report

Submitted by MEE staff on Wed, 09/16/2026 - 16:36 B'tselem warns that Israel is systemically making life unliveable for Palestinians

Cranes tower above a construction site in Givat HaMatos, an Israeli settlement and near the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Safafa (foreground) in annexed East Jerusalem, on 16 September 2026 (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP) Off

Israel is systematically trying to "eliminate" living conditions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to a new report by a rights group.

B'tselem said constant attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers were part of an overall government-backed plan to make life unbearable for Palestinians.

According to the report, titled The Elimination Project, Israel is “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank”, including “the ability to get to work, take children to school or university, receive medical treatment or municipal services, meet family and friends, cultivate land or go on vacation … routine activities that make up human life”.

“Elimination in this context means sustained harm to the conditions that enable Palestinians to exist as a people with land, institutions, language, culture, social ties, leadership, shared memory and history, and a social and political horizon," said the report, which was seen in advance of publication by the Guardian.

“It is an ongoing political project that seeks to re-organise space and the conditions of life so that Jewish presence becomes contiguous, institutionalised and permanent, while Palestinian existence becomes fragmented, vulnerable and dependent.”

The report says that the situation in the occupied West Bank is neither a temporary crisis "nor a collection of random human rights violations".

"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."

B'tselem said there were three options for Palestinians in the West Bank: “Live under Jewish supremacy while relinquishing their national claims, leave the territory, or face violent suppression by the Israeli military if they resist.”

Backlash against Israeli settlements

The report comes shortly after the announcement of bans on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank by a number of countries.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK all announced last week they were supporting or ⁠considering sanctions on trade in goods with settlements.

Over 130 lawyers warn UK sanctions on Israeli settlements don't go far enough Read More »

At least 1,107 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said that the EU should treat illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories in the same way as it treated Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

Kallas told The Irish Times on Friday that Europe could not be taken seriously as long as it remained divided on a response to the actions taken by the Israeli government and violent settlers, encouraging nations to adopt a “principled stance” by backing an EU-wide ban on Israeli settlement trade, which is illegal under international law.

She added that the volume of trade with the settlements is small, but the move to ban trade carried an important symbolic message nevertheless.

If the proposal was approved as an EU trade measure rather than a foreign policy decision, it would only require the support of a majority of member states, rather than unanimous agreement for sanctions - which Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia currently oppose.

But more than 130 lawyers, former judges and legal academics have warned British Prime Minister Andy Burnham that sanctions announced last week by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband against Israeli settlements fail to meet the UK’s obligations under international law.

In a six-page letter sent to Burnham on Tuesday, the lawyers welcome the government’s decision to act alongside Canada and France, but state that “the action covered in the recent announcement falls far short” of Britain’s obligations to oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory under a 2024 International Court of Justice ruling.

As part of last week’s announcement, the UK declared that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory was illegal. Miliband told parliament that he agrees that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is taking place in the West Bank.

Government sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights and in East Jerusalem will also be covered by the UK's new measures, as well as those in the occupied West Bank.

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