The incursion of Israeli tanks into the West Bank this week is just the latest step in an intensifying and systematic crackdown. Bushra Khalidi on five repressive tactics the Israeli government has been using, including new laws that will accelerate annexation. The strategy, she says, is now clear: make Palestinian life unlivable.
In the past few weeks, settlers have been putting up posters across the West Bank with a chilling message in Arabic: “There is no future [for you] in Palestine.”
This is no idle threat amid the continued brutal reality for Palestinians in the West Bank, who today must deal with continual Israeli assaults on their lives, their voices, their livelihoods and their land. While Gaza has dominated the headlines, the West Bank is facing a parallel crisis: one unfolding without the same scrutiny. The tanks that moved into the West Bank this week are yet another step in a long-running escalation. What we are seeing is not just sporadic violence or isolated policies, but an Israeli annexation strategy codified in law. People cannot now move between cities, new restrictions are shrinking humanitarian and civic space, and Israeli legislators are laying the groundwork for permanent Israeli control across the entire West Bank.
At the same time, the Palestinian economy is being systematically dismantled as Israel withholds Palestinian tax revenues, strangles the private sector and suffocates local markets, while the international response remains woefully inadequate and almost inexistent.
Israeli authorities reject 99% of Palestinian building permits while rapidly expanding illegal settlements. They cut off water supplies, demolish homes, and watch as armed settlers burn olive groves – the backbone of the Palestinian economy. When Palestinians try to harvest crops, Israeli forces block them or stand by as settlers attack them.
The strategy is clear: make Palestinian life unlivable. Here, we set out five key tactics being used in this assault on Palestinian lives.
1. Military and state-backed settler violence
In the West Bank, Israeli forces and settlers are engaged in systematic oppression and violence that forces displacement.
Last month the Israeli military launched “Operation Iron Wall”, involving airstrikes and ground force operations in Jenin but also targeting other cities and refugee camps across the West Bank. According to The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, Israeli forces have killed 51 Palestinians, including 7 children and an eight-month pregnant woman, and caused widespread destruction to homes and infrastructure. OCHA also says over 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced from four refugee camps and surrounding areas in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas.
The violence by the Israeli military is matched by violence from settlers: 2024 saw unprecedented levels of settler violence, with over 1,400 incidents resulting in casualties or property damage. These attacks have continued this year, with attackers operating with even more impunity as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded sanctions on Israeli settlers and entities.
Volunteer batallions, armed and trained by the military, are settlers in uniform, blurring the distinction between military and civilian: a major violation under international law, as it breaks the principle of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants. Settlers are not “extremists” acting alone – they are an extension of the Israeli state’s policy of violent dispossession.
2. Annexation and illegal settlement expansion
Settlement expansion and land confiscation violate international law, yet Israel is moving to formalize this oppression through new laws designed to accelerate Palestinian dispossession and entrench settler control. An Israeli Knesset (parliament) bill would facilitate land purchases by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, entrenching Israeli control and furthering discrimination against Palestinians (more in this Yesh Din briefing note).
Even without these laws, de facto annexation has accelerated under Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. In June 2024, he transferred administrative control over Area C – which makes up around 60% of the West Bank – from the Israeli army to settler bodies under the “Smotrich Plan.” In June 2024, 12,700 dunams (12.7 square km) of land were seized in the Jordan Valley (about a third of the area of the UK city of Oxford), the largest single land confiscation since 1993. The following month saw retroactive legalization of five settlement outposts and approval of 5,255 housing units across the West Bank.
The end of the year brought a settler-led annexation plan consolidating control over Area C and formalizing residency restrictions for Palestinians. Annexation is not a future threat: it is already in motion, being implemented through violent dispossession, land grabs, and legal manipulation thus creating coercive conditions that force Palestinian displacement and deprive them of the farmland needed for economic survival.
3. Forcible displacement and demolitions
The year 2024 brought the highest level of demolitions in two decades: Israeli forces destroyed 1,760 Palestinian structures, displacing over 4,250 people, with 1,400 attacks involving settlers. The punitive demolitions continued in January 2025, displacing dozens of families across the West Bank and an escalating trend of “self-demolitions” in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are forced to demolish their own homes.
The Israeli Minister of Finance is also now calling for the establishment of buffer zones around settlements, which would result in further land confiscations, takeovers, and additional access restrictions imposed on Palestinians.
Punitive home demolitions are illegal under international law and amount to collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. This escalation in demolitions and displacements has been a significant concern for humanitarian organizations, as it exacerbates the already challenging living conditions for some of the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank. This is not just about seizing land, it is about erasing Palestinian presence entirely. Israel is not just confiscating homes: it is making life so unbearable that Palestinians have no choice but to leave.
4. Checkpoints, fear and control
The oppressive environment extends beyond physical violence. Military checkpoints, roadblocks and closures severely limit access to essential services, disrupt daily life, and turn Palestinian communities into open-air prisons.
New closures, gates and checkpoints have been installed at the entrances of towns and villages while alternative secondary roads have been closed with roadblocks and earth mounds. Some communities have become isolated from the main cities, paralyzing the daily movement of Palestinians and leaving them unable to access essential services, such as emergency health care, education, and livelihoods. Farmers and their livelihoods are severely impacted, affecting food security.
According to data from OCHA, as of the end of February 2025, there are currently at least 800 Israeli military checkpoints, barriers and gates in the West Bank, 20 installed since the beginning of this year at the entrances of towns and villages. This is not just about security – this is about control. Israel’s checkpoints are not protecting anyone; they are a deliberate tool to fragment Palestinian communities, strangling economic life and eroding any hope of sovereignty.
5. Shrinking civic and humanitarian space
The Government of Israel is ramping up restrictions on INGOs. If it fully annexes Area C and further movement restrictions or permit regimes are imposed, both national and international organizations (without Israeli permits and registration) will be unable to access vulnerable communities, particularly in the Jordan Valley. Such measures would also further silence organizations that document Israeli human rights violations and report violations of international law.
Bureaucratic obstacles already imposed on INGOs undermine humanitarian access and have left millions without aid and protection. Since the beginning of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, permits and visas for staff – both Palestinian and international – have been systematically denied. New INGO registration and visa restrictions have also shifted oversight to the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, meaning NGOs can lose registrations based on vague criteria.
Such attacks on civil society are not isolated. On 29 January this year, Israeli forces raided the Tulkarem Farmers’ Association (a member of the Palestinian Farmers Union), along with the offices of the Agricultural Relief and Social Work Committees, ransacking them and turning them into a military outpost. They vandalized the premises, seized documents and equipment, and deployed snipers at the building’s windows. This is not just an attack on an office, this is a direct assault on Palestinian civil society and the agricultural sector. Farmers who rely on these associations for support now face even greater restrictions on movement and access to essential services. The Palestinian Farmers Union has called for urgent international condemnation and intervention – but will there be any consequences?
The new Israeli decision on INGO registration and visas – along with the ongoing attack on UNRWA – is part of a pattern of escalating restrictions on humanitarian actors. These restrictions affect not only international humanitarian organizations but also Palestinian and Israeli actors working to provide aid, protect human rights, and address injustices.
The result of aid restrictions is that today, over 620,000 Palestinians in the West Bank face inadequate access to basic services, with daily water supply levels in Hebron and Bethlehem falling below the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum. OCHA says that in the West Bank between 7 Oct 2023 and July 2024, Israeli authorities demolished, confiscated or forced the demolition of 109 water, sanitation and hygiene structures (double the number in the same period before 7 October), further exacerbating the water and sanitation crisis.
International law demands international action
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has made clear that Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise violate international law. Under the Rome Statute, forced displacement is a war crime.
What should other countries do to respond to this illegal assault on Palestinian lives and rights? International law places obligations on third states to ensure they do not recognize or aid unlawful annexation, including restricting economic or political support that enables such violations. In fact, by failing to act, third states are complicit in violations of international law.
Oxfam is campaigning for a broad range of actions and measures. But urgent now is that countries:
- Demand an end to Israel’s illegal occupation, the dismantling of settlements and complete self-determination for Palestinians.
- Halt arms transfers and military support to Israel that enable violations of international law.
- Press Israel to halt illegal settlement construction and retroactive outpost legalization.
- Increase diplomatic pressure on Israel to uphold Palestinian rights, including housing, dignified work, and access to education, and prevent demolition and seizure of school infrastructure.
- Pressure Israel to allow impartial humanitarian organizations access to communities in need, in line with its obligations under international humanitarian law.
- Demand Israel rescind the new INGO registration, visa restrictions and permits for national staff members.
This isn’t a natural disaster or a complex conflict: this is an annexation strategy unfolding in real time, ultimately forcing Palestinians off their land. This is forcible displacement, it is erasure, and it is being implemented under the cover of silence and inaction.
What ties all of this together is the systematic erosion, not just of humanitarian space, but of international law itself. For the past 15 months, we have not just witnessed impunity, we have witnessed the normalization of impunity. And this is not just Israel’s doing. This is the failure of the entire international system – including key states who have not only shielded Israel from accountability but actively enabled Israel’s crimes through arms sales, diplomatic cover at the UN, and the continued failure to impose consequences.
As Israel tightens its grip through military force, settler violence, and legal manipulation, the question isn’t whether this constitutes systematic oppression, but how much longer the international community will allow it to continue. The world cannot claim ignorance. It cannot claim surprise. The evidence is overwhelming, and the consequences of continued inaction will be devastating – not just for Palestinians, but for the entire international legal system.
Author
Read Oxfam’s press release about the West Bank published earlier this week about the largest forced displacement in the West Bank since 1967