Israel is applying an "elimination project" of Palestinians in the West Bank, warns an Israeli NGO

BarcelonaIsrael seeks to "eliminate" the conditions that make life possible for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem denounced this Monday in a report. The entity warns that settlers and the army are blocking "the ability to get to work, go to school or university, receive medical treatment or access municipal services, family or friends gatherings, work the land, go on vacation... routine activities that make human life possible".

The report titled "Elimination Project" highlights that Israeli attacks in the West Bank are carried out "from an organized logic" that combines five factors: violence, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, political and social destruction, ethnic cleansing, and land usurpation. It has been published only six weeks before the legislative elections on October 27th, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is risking his political future, after three years of genocide in Gaza and with many questions still unanswered about the Palestinian attacks of October 7, 2023. "Combined, these mechanisms are part of a settler-colonial project that aims to expand and institutionalize a permanent Jewish presence in the territory, while expelling and erasing the Palestinian presence from this space," states B'Tselem.

1,107 Palestinians killed in the West Bank

The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 2023 is breaking records. The report concludes that various branches of the Israeli state –led by Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right Minister of Finance responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank– are attempting to "create a reality in which millions of Palestinians live under the constant fear of Israeli military and civil violence".

64 erased communities

"Palestinian communities are being expelled in an increasingly accelerated process of ethnic cleansing, while in their place an Israeli presence in constant expansion is being consolidated, in the form of settlements, outposts, farms, and civil infrastructure for the exclusive use of Jews," states the report. "In this context, elimination means sustained harm to the conditions that allow Palestinians to exist as a people, with a land, institutions, a language, a culture, social ties, a leadership, a shared memory and history, and a social and political horizon," it adds.

B'Tselem states that Israel only leaves three options for Palestinians: "Live under Jewish supremacy renouncing their national claims, abandon the territory, or face violent repression by the Israeli army if they resist." In this context, settler violence no longer "operates only as private violence or as a disturbance of public order," but as part of a "system of control" that is sometimes imposed "alongside soldiers, with the support of security forces, using weapons, infrastructure, and equipment provided by the state, and with almost total impunity."

31.3% unemployment

The unemployment rate has more than doubled in the West Bank in two years, as a result of what B'Tselem defines as "a total economic strangulation," through the destruction of agricultural and industrial infrastructure, control of the financial system, and obstacles to Palestinian institutions in providing basic services. Work permits for Palestinians in Israel have also been revoked. The result is that 700,000 Palestinians in the West Bank need humanitarian aid to eat.

Closed schools

Between 8% and 20% of schools in the West Bank were closed during the 2023-24 academic year, due to the financial strangulation of the Palestinian Authority imposed by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which has halted the transfer of taxes collected to the Palestinian pseudo-government. Currently, a large number of children only attend school two or three days a week due to a lack of teachers. The same is happening with the healthcare system, which is on the verge of collapse.

Universities are also frequent targets of military incursions, as happened in Birzeit in January, where the army dispersed a peaceful gathering with war weapons against the crowd and wounded a dozen people. In the last three years, several hundred students have been detained at this university.

400 outlawed organizations

Between 1967 and 2019, Israel banned more than 400 Palestinian organizations, including major political parties, associations, unions, and humanitarian or human rights defense organizations. In recent years, in the name of the fight against terrorism, the pressure has intensified even further with the closure of dozens of organizations. "Israel maintains a permanent attack against the spaces where Palestinian political and social consciousness emerges, whether they are universities or schools, or religious, cultural, and community centers," notes B'Tselem.