Israel is clearing Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank village by village, using state-backed settler violence to drive communities from their land and prepare the ground for mass expulsion, a veteran Israeli columnist has warned.
Writing in Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth, Nahum Barnea said the violence of the so-called “hilltop youth” is not random lawlessness, but part of a state-backed project to remove Palestinians from their land. He described them as “an armed militia that is working for the government, with its authorisation and funding.”
The aim, wrote Barnea, is to empty outlying Palestinian areas, force the rural population into cities, trigger economic collapse and lawlessness and then present expulsion as the final outcome.
“The current plan aims to achieve a solution in stages: to empty the outlying areas of residents in the first stage and then, in the second stage, to force the entire rural population into the cities, where they will live as displaced persons” Barnea said. “The economy will collapse, followed by the collapse of law and order, and then, when chaos peaks, the solution will arrive: expulsion”.
Barnea’s article, translated and shared online, described what he called a “scorched earth” policy in the occupied Palestinian territories. He said the Netanyahu government is violating Israel’s international commitments across multiple fronts, including the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the Oslo framework.
First Apartheid, Then Transfer -The 🇮🇱government “has a vision” for the WB. First, “to force the entire rural population into the cities, where they will live as displaced persons.” Collapse the economy, law & order. “When chaos peaks, expulsion”
Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth pic.twitter.com/YywYdM9ss4— Yehuda Shaul (@YehudaShaul) May 20, 2026
“The government isn’t merely running roughshod; it has a vision,” said Barnea. “The pogroms are the cover story that decent-minded folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
Israeli soldiers are divided between those who take part in attacks, Barnea explained and those who watch from the side and those who fear acting against settlers.
READ: UN reports nearly 50 illegal Israeli occupier attacks across West Bank in 1 week
He also accused police of failing to intervene or investigate. “Ben Gvir’s spirit hovers over them,” he wrote, referring to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose ministry oversees the police.
Barnea linked this campaign to a broader political project. He argued that the old plan of dividing the West Bank through settlement blocs has been replaced by a more direct strategy: emptying Palestinian rural areas, concentrating Palestinians in cities, allowing conditions to collapse and then moving towards transfer.
His warning echoes findings by Israeli rights groups. Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights Israel said last year that the Israeli government was sponsoring settler violence in order to displace Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The groups said the state was responsible for the war crime of forcible transfer, committed with the support of state agents or citizens.
UN experts and human rights bodies have also warned that settlement expansion and settler attacks are driving mass displacement. In March the UN warned of “ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank after 36,000 Palestinians were displaced, amid a sharp rise in settler violence and Israeli military operations.
The West Bank warning comes as Israel is accused of pursuing the same objective in Gaza through even more extreme means: genocide, mass destruction, starvation and forced displacement. While settlers and state-backed militias drive Palestinians from rural land in the West Bank, Israel has destroyed much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, forced Palestinians into shrinking zones and promoted plans for their “voluntary migration” abroad.
That policy was reportedly been given an official channel through Caroline Glick, Netanyahu’s international affairs adviser. Netanyahu tasked Glick with advancing plans to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, including reported contacts with Somaliland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
READ: Israeli military to implement death penalty against Palestinian attackers in West Bank
