On 14 June 2021, fires broke out on pastureland that lies on a ridge south of the village of Beit Furik and the community of Khirbet Tana. The settlement of Itamar was established along the ridge in 1984, on land belonging to Palestinian villages. Since then, several outposts have also been erected there. In addition to the land grab, the settlers have taken over pastureland that used to serve the Palestinians and prevent area farmers and shepherds from accessing it.
The evening after the fire, about eight masked settlers came to the road that links the village with the community. They violently assaulted several farmers, demanded to know who (they claimed) had started the fire the night before and threatened them. During the attack, they smashed one of the farmers’ car windows and put burning cardboard inside the trunk.
In another spot, settlers set fire to a field. About 10 trees and 20 beehives were burned down. The settlers then left the area. State-backed settler violence against Palestinians, often with the participation of soldiers, has long been an inseparable part of the occupation routine. The long-term result of these violent acts is the dispossession of Palestinians from more and more parts of the West Bank, facilitating Israel’s takeover of land and resources there.
Farmer Ahmad Hanani (76), a resident of Beit Furik, recounted how settlers smashed the windows of his car, tried to torch it and threatened him:
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The damage the settlers caused Ahmad Hanani’s car. Photo courtesy of the witness
On Tuesday, 15 June 2021, before sunset, my brother Mahmoud (66) and I were watering olive trees on our plot, which lies on the eastern side of the village along the road to Khirbet Tana. Suddenly, two cars stopped next to us and several settlers got out. At first, I thought they had car trouble or something like that, but then I saw them smashing the windows of my car.
I was afraid they’d set fire to it, too, so I got on the tractor Mahmoud was driving and we headed towards my car. When we got there, we saw the settlers had smashed all the windows. When we were close, one of them shouted at us to get off the tractor. We did, and then one settler climbed on the tractor and drove it for about 100 meters. Meanwhile, another one, who spoke good Arabic, asked us, “Why did you set fire to the hill?” I answered, “As you can see, we’re working our land and don’t know what you’re talking about.” I gathered that he was upset because someone had set fire to the mountain where he tends to his sheep. The settler said, “Say thank you to God that we’re not angry and will let you go because you’re old.” Then he told me to get out of there quickly before he torched the car.
I got into the car and Mahmoud went towards the tractor, and we started driving towards our village. On the way, I smelled something burning, so I stopped the car and got out to check where the smell was coming from. I found burning cardboard in the trunk. The fire had already spread to the work clothes that were in there. I took them out quickly, threw them on the ground and put them out.
The settlers meant to burn me. They lit the cardboard and put it in the car. It’s really unbelievable that they’re so crazy they almost killed us. Like what the settler told me before he left, that we should leave before he destroyed the carburetor. All they want is to cause harm.
Farmer Hisham Nasasrah (38), a father of three from Beit Furik, described how settlers attacked him and threatened his life and his flock:
On the evening of 15 June 2021, while I was feeding my 30 sheep, I heard a noise outside the shack. Suddenly, someone threw a plastic chair inside. Then I saw eight or nine masked settlers standing outside. They were throwing away the plastic chairs I’d put there.
Then the settlers stormed into the shack and shouted at me, “Who set fire to the hill?” They were holding sticks and iron pipes. They pushed me and hit me several times with the sticks and pipes. I thought they would kill me, so I grabbed one of them and pinned him to the ground and shouted at them to get back. They moved off a little, and I let go of the settler. One of them spoke excellent Arabic and said to me, “Who lit the fire?” I answered, “I don’t know. I work inside here and don’t know what’s going on outside.” The settler said to me in a threatening tone, “If it happens again, I’ll burn you and your sheep.” Then he turned around and left.
I couldn’t believe I’d managed to survive. They acted like monsters. It was all because of the hill that had burned down the day before. I don’t know who set fire to it. That settler has livestock, and he grazes them on the hill and prevents Palestinian residents from going there.
I couldn’t sleep at night. I had headaches and my back hurt, too. The bruises from the blows turned blue.
Bassem Nasasrah (48), a father of seven from Khirbet Tana, recalled how settlers torched trees and beehives after threatening his life and the lives of his children:
On Tuesday evening, 15 June 2021, I was sitting under one of the trees by my house with my neighbor, Hamdi Malitat (51). Suddenly, I saw two pickup trucks driving towards us. They were driving so fast that I thought they’d run us over. I got up quickly and the pickups screeched to a halt. About eight or nine masked settlers got out.
The settlers were holding sticks. I noticed sticks with pieces of cloth on them, like torches, inside one of the pickups. One of the settlers asked me right away, “Who set fire to the hill?” I answered, “How should I know? We’re sitting here!” He said, “If it happens again, I’ll set fire to you and your children.”
My wife saw what was going on from inside the house. Our four children, between the ages of seven and 15, were with her and they came over to us. One of the settlers pushed the children, snatched my son’s (12) cellphone out of his hand, threw it on the floor and broke it. The settler threatened again and again to burn us down and set fire to the houses if the hill burned down again.
Before the settlers left, they threw flammable materials that set fire to farmland that belongs to a resident of Beit Furik. He has trees and beehives there. We’re far away from the fire stations, so a lot of them burned down completely.
I don’t know who set fire to the hill. I was very sad when I saw the fires, because I used to graze my flock there. But for the last six years or so, the settlers have stopped us from getting to that land most of the time, because the settler who lives in Itamar raises livestock and wants the pasture to himself. Even so, I manage to get there sometimes to pick weeds for my flock.
I’m staying in Khirbet Tana because I have nowhere else to go. This is my source of income and it’s what I live off. If I move to Beit Furik, I’ll have no livelihood. Where would I put my sheep? There’s no suitable place or pasture there. The village is crowded and no one wants to live near cattle and sheep.
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
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.
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.
