The Authority Already Exists – What’s Needed Is a Willingness to Act

21 December 2011

Soldiers in the Occupied Territories already have the legal authority to arrest Israeli citizens

Settler violence in the presence of soldiers. B'Tselem video, April 2011

Reports have appeared in the Israeli media in recent days claiming that the security forces will soon be given new powers to combat settler violence. According to the reports, soldiers will be authorized to detain and arrest Israelis in the Occupied Territories.

The reports are misleading. Israeli soldiers stationed in the West Bank are already authorized to detain Israeli citizens, if it is suspected that they have committed or are about to commit a criminal offense. The fact that soldiers do not usually take real-time action to arrest settlers who attacking Palestinians is not due to a lack of authority, but to a lack of willingness on the part of the system to take action to protect Palestinians and their property.

B'Tselem emphasizes once again that there is no need to provide the law enforcement agencies in the Territories with new powers. What is needed is to exercise the existing powers. The reluctance of the Israeli army to detain violent settlers in the field is one part of the problem. The police must also ensure effective investigations to uncover attacks committed clandestinely by settlers.

In order to clarify this point, we attach two official documents distributed to soldiers by the Military Advocate General’s Corps and the Civil Administration at the end of 2006 following the ruling issued by the High Court of Justice in the “olive harvest petition” filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Rabbis for Human Rights. The documents are not dated, and were received by B'Tselem in 2007. These documents detail the law enforcement obligations incumbent on Israeli soldiers:

Excerpt from the documents:

The Military's Legal Advisor in the West Bank:

2. Detaining – The General Rule

As a general rule, IDF soldiers are permitted to detain any person (including Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners) present in the Judea and Samaria Area, in the following cases:

A. When the soldier has reasonable grounds to suspect that the said person has committed an offense, or that he is about to commit an offense liable to endanger the safety or security of another, or public order and security– in this case, the soldier is permitted to detain the said person in order to clarify his identity and personal details, or in order to enable a person holding investigative authority (a police officer or member of the General Security Service) to take him elsewhere and interrogate him.

When a soldier has reasonable grounds to suspect that the said person has information (for example – an eye-witness) relating to an offense committed, or about to be committed, that is liable to endanger the safety or security of another, or pblic order or or security– in this case, the soldier is permitted to detain the said person in order to clarify his identity and personal details, or in order to summons him to place where a person holding investigative authority is present.

(Download full document in Hebrew)

The Civil Administration:

Clarification of Instructions relating to Law Enforcement against Israelis in the Judea and Samaria Area

The following is a clarification of several instructions of relevance to the issue of access by Palestinian farmers to their agricultural land, particularly regarding the processing by IDF soldiers of “incidents of friction” liable to occur regarding access by Palestinians to agricultural land situated in known areas of friction.

Obligation incumbent on soldiers to intervene to prevent an offense – the Procedure for the Enforcement of the Law against Israelis in the Judea and Samaria Area established that if an IDF soldier witnesses an offense committed by an Israeli (such as an incident of the assault or harassment of Palestinian farmers), he must take immediate action to thwart the execution of the offense, using any appropriate means not liable to endanger the life of the IDF forces or the suspect, including detaining or arresting the suspect of the offense, if necessary, pending the arrival of the police forces. The soldier is not permitted to stand by without taking action, and must act, within the framework of his function, to restore public order as detailed above.

Soldiers present on the scene must also prevent offenders from fleeing, and must ensure that the scene, and the evidence present there, are preserved, as much as possible.

(Download full document in Hebrew)

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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