Peter Oborne’s latest reporting from the West Bank confirms what human rights organizations have been documenting for years: Israel is running a coordinated campaign to depopulate Palestinian communities and entrench permanent Jewish control over the territory.
Settlers are not acting alone. They are armed, funded, and shielded by the Israeli state. They receive military‑grade rifles, agricultural machinery, surveillance drones, and new roads built specifically to expand their reach. Palestinians, meanwhile, face home demolitions, land seizures, and escalating violence.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settler attacks have more than doubled since 2023. Entire Palestinian communities—over 1,200 people—have been forced to flee due to violence and intimidation. Israeli human rights groups like Yesh Din report that over 90% of settler attacks result in no charges at all.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds unprecedented authority over the West Bank’s civil administration, has used his position to funnel money into settlement expansion. While Israel’s national budget faces cuts, settlement budgets have ballooned. In February, Smotrich announced a restructuring of land registration laws to make it easier for settlers to claim Palestinian land as “state land.” He openly declared: “We will continue to kill off the idea of a Palestinian state.”
The IDF’s role is central. Soldiers routinely accompany settlers during raids on Palestinian villages. They block Palestinian ambulances, detain Palestinian farmers, and provide cover for settlers who torch homes or seize grazing land. In many cases documented by B’Tselem, the army fires on Palestinians who attempt to defend themselves or their property.
Meanwhile, new outposts—illegal even under Israeli law—are being established at record speed. Instead of dismantling them, the government connects them to infrastructure and retroactively legalizes them. Each outpost becomes a foothold for further expansion, pushing Palestinians into smaller and smaller enclaves.
This is a textbook case of ethnic cleansing: the removal of an Indigenous population through violence, coercion, and state‑backed settlement. The West Bank is being carved up in real time, and the people who have lived there for centuries are being erased from it.
