Security forces stand idly by during settler rioting in Hebron

4 June 2009

On 2 June, B'Tselem called on the defense minister, OC Central Command, and the commander of SHAI Police District to prepare for acts of violence by settlers following evacuation of outposts.
The demand is made following a wave of violent attacks by Palestinians the previous day, and on the backdrop of experience in recent years regarding what the settlers refer to as their “price tag” policy.

In its letter, B'Tselem claimed that settlers can be expected to try to harm Palestinians and Palestinian property following evacuation of outposts, Therefore, security forces must prepare in advance to prevent attacks of this kind, and certainly must stop the attacks, by removal of the assailants, right at the start. B'Tselem also demanded that security forces fulfill their obligation to allow Palestinian rescue and fire services freedom of movement, or, alternatively, ensure that Israel evacuates the injured and extinguishes the fires.

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Background:

In recent years, B'Tselem has documented a number of cases in which settlers acted in accordance with these declarations. The violence followed evacuation of settlements or after authorities demolished their building. The settlers' actions included gunfire, physical assaults, raids in Palestinian villages and Palestinian land, torching of fields, uprooting of orchards, and damage to property. A few illustrative incidents from the past year follow:

On 24 July 2008, following removal of a bus placed at the Adey Ad outpost, settlers assaulted Palestinian in the area of Yitzhar and damaged orchards and property. During the week following the removal, B'Tselem documented other violence, including an incident in which settlers assaulted shepherds and torched a house in Burin, and a case in which a settler threw stones at a vehicle driving on Route 60 near Yitzhar, severely wounding a woman and her daughter.

On 18 September 2008, following removal of a caravan at the Yad Ya'ir outpost, settlers assaulted Palestinians throughout the West Bank. According to reports the media, in response to the removal, settlers threw stones at Palestinian vehicles at the Shilo intersection, torched olive orchards in the area of the Yitzhar settlement, and attempted to block a road in the Hebron area. In addition, B'Tselem documented that on the same day of the removal, some twenty masked settlers assaulted farmers, causing serious damage to their farm, which is situated next to the outpost.

In October and November 2008, during evacuation of Federman Farm, in Hebron, settlers broke through the fence surrounding the special security area of the Givat Haharsinah settlement, in which the outpost was situated, and repeatedly assaulted several times Palestinians living nearby and their property. The attacks included stone throwing, setting fires, and an attempt to break into one of the houses.

In a few cases that included violent settler raids on adjacent Palestinian villages, B'Tselem's investigation indicated that security forces took action only at relatively late stages, generally after Palestinians began to throw stones at their assailants. In these cases, security forces entered the village and attacked the Palestinians, using crowd control measures and gunfire, rather than protect Palestinians victims of assault and arrest, or remove, the assailant settlers. As a result, Palestinians were injured and much damage was done to Palestinian property.

Two more examples from the past year follow:

On 19 June 2008, after the police demolished two structures at the Shaked Farm outpost, next to Yitzhar, dozens of settlers and right-wing activists attacked the adjacent village Burin, threw stones at its residents, and burned extensive agricultural areas. Testimonies given to B'Tselem indicate that soldiers who stood between the assailants and village residents fired tear gas into the village, and did not act similarly against the assailants, who remained in place and continued their attacks for a few hours.

In advance of evacuation of the al-Rajabi home, in Hebron, (known as the disputed house), and during the evacuation itself, B'Tselem documented a great number of cases in which settlers assaulted Palestinians and Palestinian property in the area around the settlement. In a few cases, security forces protected the assailants or stood nearby without doing anything to stop the attacks. The most serious incident took place on 4 December 2008, when security forces did not prevent dozens of settlers from entering a Palestinian neighborhood in a wadi nearby, and enabled them to assault Palestinians in the neighborhood. Four residents of Kiryat Arba fired at members of one family, injuring two of them.

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The Elimination Project: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Collective Life in the West Bank

Open-Fire Policy

New B’Tselem report: Israel is carrying out an elimination project in the West Bank

B’Tselem’s most comprehensive report to date on Israeli policy in the West Bank finds that Israel is using five mutually reinforcing mechanisms to dismantle Palestinian collective existence there and forcibly reorganize the territory to establish a permanent, contiguous Jewish-Israeli presence and sovereignty.Since late 2022, and especially since October 2023, Israeli policy in the West Bank has entered a new phase. Israel has sharply escalated longstanding policies of control, violence and dispossession, implementing them more openly, more violently and at a faster pace. These measures are also becoming increasingly institutionalized in government policy and practice.With this process intensifying by the day, B’Tselem is publishing The Elimination Project, a 200-page report based on an analysis of approximately 2,000 testimonies from Palestinians in the West Bank, additional field research and decades of documentation. The report traces the acceleration and expansion in recent years of longstanding Israeli policies and practices.“What Palestinians are living through in the West Bank is not a series of separate incidents. It is a single political project that reaches into every part of life,” said B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak. “Communities are being expelled, the economy is being pushed toward collapse, and millions are living in constant fear of Israeli military or settler violence. These mechanisms work together to dismantle Palestinian collective life while entrenching a permanent system of Jewish supremacy across the West Bank. The world is watching and still failing to respond with anything close to the urgency this demands.”How the Elimination Project worksThe report identifies five interconnected mechanisms through which Israel is advancing this project across the West Bank:Violence and intimidation: Israel is using military forces and armed settler militias to impose violence, fear and coercion. From 7 October 2023 through 31 August 2026, Israel killed 1,107 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 245 children.Ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover: Israel is using military operations, demolitions and state-backed settler farms and outposts to drive Palestinians from their land and expand Jewish presence there. To date, 75 Palestinian communities have been forcibly displaced; settler farms and outposts have taken control of 1.07 million dunams of land (18% of the West Bank); and about 33,000 Palestinians have been displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.Movement restrictions: Israel is fragmenting Palestinian space through checkpoints, gates and roadblocks. By the end of 2025, OCHA documented 925 movement obstacles throughout the West Bank.Economic strangulation: Israel is using its control over employment, Palestinian revenues, finance and infrastructure to deepen economic crisis and dependence. Unemployment rose from 13.1% in 2022 to over 31% in 2024, amid mass permit revocations and intensified withholding of revenues.Social and political destruction: Israel criminalizes political organizing, raids and shuts down civil society offices, suppresses protests and arrests activists, students and journalists. Since October 2023, Israel has arrested at least 60 Palestinian journalists from the West Bank.The political blueprint: The report identifies Bezalel Smotrich’s 2017 Decisive Plan as a key document for understanding the current escalation. Its strategy of “victory through settlement” seeks to make Jewish sovereignty irreversible through settlement expansion, land takeover and Palestinian displacement, while leaving Palestinians three options: submit to Jewish supremacy, leave, or face military repression. Though the plan was never formally adopted as government policy, Smotrich now holds broad powers over planning, land and enforcement in the West Bank, and core elements of its logic are increasingly reflected in state policy and practice.Decades in the making: The Elimination Project long predates the 2017 plan and the current Israeli government. B’Tselem situates the current Israeli assault on Palestinian life within a long-term settler-colonial project operating through Israel’s apartheid regime. In the Gaza Strip, this logic has reached its most extreme form in the genocide Israel is committing; in the West Bank, the current government has accelerated the project and made its mechanisms more overt.International responsibility: B’Tselem calls on governments and international institutions to stop treating Israel’s violations as isolated incidents, stop enabling Israel’s crimes, protect Palestinians and act to end Israel’s apartheid regime and military rule. A just future requires a political order based on freedom, justice, equality and democracy for all who live on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with full realization of individual and collective rights and equal political participation.B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said: “Palestinians are being left exposed to escalating violence while Israel advances its project of elimination in the West Bank. Governments cannot condemn these crimes while granting Israel the impunity to continue. Together with international institutions, they must use every means available under international law to stop Israel’s crimes and halt the machinery of violence and destruction that is tearing Palestinian life apart.”The full report, executive summary, maps, and graphs are available at the following link: https://www.btselem.org/elimination/?lang=en

14 September 2026

Open-Fire Policy

The Elimination Project

Since the current Israeli government took office at the end of 2022, and even more so since October 2023, Israel has dramatically escalated its assault on all aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank. At any moment, Palestinians may be exposed to violence by soldiers or armed settler militias, arrested and imprisoned, subjected to abuse and humiliation, and sometimes even killed.The Elimination Project draws on more than 2,000 testimonies B’Tselem collected from Palestinians since October 2023 and over three decades of documenting the Israeli apartheid regime’s human rights abuses in the West Bank. The report looks at the current reality not as a collection of isolated incidents or specific harms, but as part of a comprehensive mechanism of elimination that works to dismantle the conditions for continued Palestinian existence in the West Bank, while deepening Jewish control and supremacy in an irreversible manner. An examination of the current reality in the West Bank reveals that the project of elimination is now being implemented more openly, directly and violently than before, and increasingly relies on cooperation between official state authorities and settler militias operating in the West Bank with state backing and support.

14 September 2026

Settlers entering Jalud. Still from security camera footage, courtesy of the residents

Settler Violence = State Violence

Qusrah, Talfit and Jalud, Nablus District: Residents of three villages subjected to extreme settler violence since a new outpost was established between them

On 21 January 2026, settlers established the outpost of Tel Talpiyot at the top of a hill known as Jabal 'Ein 'Ena on Talfit village land. The spot, which lies deep within Area B in the midst of Palestinian villages, is far from Area C and has had no previous settler presence.While establishing the outpost, the settlers took over an unfinished house belonging to a Talfit resident and prevented its continued construction. Since then, the villages of Talfit, Qusrah and Jalud have been suffering from severe violence at their hands. In the month after the outpost was established, B’Tselem documented 10 serious attacks against residents, as well as a brutal assault on human rights activists who were accompanying a family driven out of their home by the violence. The assailants used stones and clubs, set homes on fire, and vandalized and torched vehicles. [block:settlers_blog_map_block nid=217668 updates=217835,217836,217837,217838,217841,217842,217812,217849 arrows hide_nid]Click on the icons on the map for details of some of the attacks between January and March 2026. In some cases, they were filmed arriving on an ATV similar or identical to those distributed by the ministries of finance and settlement, on the initiative of Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock.On 14 March 2026, settlers who attacked homes on the western outskirts of Qusrah killed Amir ‘Odeh, 28, when he advanced with his father and several other residents toward them after they had gone a short way in the direction the outpost. Knowing this was the second attack on area homes that day, the residents feared the settlers would return. After a brief exchange of stones at a distance of about 100 meters, one of the settlers opened fire at the residents, shooting ‘Odeh in the chest and wounding two others in the leg. When ‘Odeh’s father tried to help him, the settlers attacked father and son with blows, beating them with club and stabbing them until the father lost consciousness. Only after the settlers went further away toward the outpost were the residents able to take the two men to the hospital, where ‘Odeh was pronounced dead.

27 May 2026