Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

B’Tselem’s new investigation documents how coordinated pressure is making Palestinian communities unlivable across the West Bank. At Khirbet Zanuta, a publicly supported settler farm remained while court-backed efforts failed to restore the village beside it.

B’Tselem’s new investigation, The Elimination Project, documents how settler violence, movement restrictions, economic pressure, attacks on collective institutions and territorial seizure work together to dismantle Palestinian life across the occupied West Bank. Drawing on approximately 2,000 testimonies, the Israeli human-rights organisation records that pattern at scale.

In Khirbet Zanuta, the pattern converged around an Israeli settler farm established with regional council support. Residents of the Palestinian herding community in the South Hebron Hills reported violence that drove about 250 people to flee, while repeated court interventions failed to secure their lasting return. As one settler farm expanded its hold on the surrounding land, an entire Palestinian village was emptied—a recurring pattern documented across the occupied West Bank.

REPORT: B’Tselem’s The Elimination Project documents how violence, movement restrictions, economic pressure, attacks on collective institutions and territorial seizure are working together to dismantle Palestinian life across the occupied West Bank. (Source: B’Tselem)
The Elimination ProJEct

US Representative Ro Khanna entered Zanuta on 8 July 2026. As he walked through the remains of the village school, he saw an armed settler watching through a broken window, prompting his delegation to hurry back into its van. Settlers carrying what appeared to be M4 rifles then blocked the dirt road, kicked the tyres and filmed the people inside. Khanna said the confrontation lasted between 75 and 90 minutes.

Khanna said Israeli soldiers arrived but did not clear the road for his delegation. The military disputed his account, saying troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and reopened the road. Police arrived after the delegation contacted the United States Embassy. The delegation stood amid the ruins of a village whose residents had already asked Israel’s highest court for protection. Their case led back to a paper trail that began years before the village was emptied.

IMAGE: US Representative Ro Khanna visits the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta in the occupied West Bank, 8 July 2026. (Source: The New York Times)

In March 2021, the Meitarim Industrial Zone Directorate, part of the Har Hebron Development Company Ltd., signed an agreement with settler Yinon Levi to establish Meitarim Farm near Zanuta. The company is controlled by the Har Hebron Regional Council, which administers Israeli settlements in the area. Contract extracts published by Peace Now and reporting by The Times of Israel show that the farm was expected to maintain a presence and protect what the agreement called state lands and the surrounding area. The deal provided for residential and agricultural facilities, while water and electricity were subsidised during the first year. Levi confirmed that he signed it.

Although the agreement did not order Zanuta’s residents to leave, it showed that the farm was not simply a rogue encampment later tolerated by the authorities. A company controlled by the regional council had helped establish it and assigned it a role in holding the surrounding land.

For Zanuta’s families, who raised sheep and goats in the dry hills south of Hebron, survival depended on pasture, water and safe passage between their homes and land. Residents later reported that armed settlers entered houses, assaulted people, damaged solar panels, emptied water tanks and pumped sewage onto farmland. They said the attacks intensified after 7 October 2023, and every family left between 27 October and 1 November 2023.

The displaced residents turned to Israel’s High Court to secure their return and protection. In May 2024, the Court required the state to set out how it would protect them, their property and their livestock. It also demanded answers over the lack of an emergency contact and the repeated failure of police to respond to complaints and collect evidence

In its 29 July decision, the Court relied on the state’s promise to coordinate their return and affirmed that military and police forces must protect Palestinian residents from violence. A police representative acknowledged suspected soldier involvement in some incidents and said police sometimes held back when troops were already present. The Court also recorded that no indictments had been filed in the relevant police-handled cases. The judges called the picture “disturbing, to say the least” and acknowledged that the measures before them did not provide a complete solution.

When families returned in August, they found damaged homes and a damaged school. Some slept outside because rebuilding remained restricted. Renewed harassment followed, and the return collapsed. Their lawyers later sought contempt proceedings against the army, police and Civil Administration.

IMAGE: The remains of Khirbet Zanuta after the Palestinian herding community was displaced and its structures destroyed. (Source: Amnesty International)

The Court intervened again in February 2025, directing the authorities to facilitate another return, remove intruders and permit repairs. But access was no longer the only obstacle. When village head Faez Tel returned with four other men the following month, they found no habitable building in which they could spend the night

Amnesty International later said satellite imagery dated 30 March 2025 showed no structures remaining in Zanuta. Its investigation concluded that the community had been fully depopulated and extensively destroyed. In July 2026, Amnesty reported that all 250 residents, including 100 children, remained displaced.

A month after the satellite image was taken, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements Minister Orit Strock attended a ceremony at Meitarim Farm. Nineteen state-financed vehicles were distributed to agricultural outposts across the South Hebron Hills. The Times of Israel reported that the all-terrain vehicles came from a NIS 75 million security programme coordinated with the Defence Ministry and the army’s Central Command. Smotrich praised the farms for controlling large areas, while Strock described the government as their “combat support.”

IMAGE: Settlements Minister Orit Strock and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at an ATV handover at Meitarim Farm, 3 April 2025. Photo: Freddy Barmi. (Source: The Times of Israel)

Zanuta’s residents had secured court backing for their return but had nowhere to sleep, while Ministers gathered at the neighbouring farm to celebrate the wider outpost movement for extending control over the land. Levi, who denies involvement in violence, remains under British sanctions, while the European Union says he participated in violent acts against neighbouring villages from Meitarim Farm. The United States also sanctioned him before lifting the designation in January 2025 after President Donald Trump revoked the programme.

No single order emptied Zanuta. Instead, the village illustrates what B’Tselem describes as an “integrated system” in which institutional support for settlement, violence, restrictions and impunity reinforce one another.

A company controlled by an Israeli regional council helped establish the neighbouring farm, while residents reported violence and threats that drove them away. Yet court-backed efforts to secure their return failed amid destroyed homes, restrictions on rebuilding and inadequate enforcement. It is a pattern B’Tselem’s investigation traces across Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

By July 2026, Zanuta’s residents remained displaced while the Israeli government continued supporting agricultural outposts. Across the road from the ruined school, the farm remained

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