Today, as Israelis went to the ballot box, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were left to watch on, knowing the results will surely shape their lives and livelihoods. 

Settler pogroms, home demolitions, land seizures, arrests, killings, closed military checkpoints — these are all part of daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank. None of this is new, but since the outgoing government came into power four years ago, what has changed is the scale. 

In a new report for +972 Magazine — a project we have been working on for several months — Basel Adra, Oren Ziv and I try to capture the enormity of this transformation. 

Since October 7, Israel has intensified its military operations, expanded settlements and outposts, imposed sweeping restrictions on Palestinian movement, tightened its control over vast areas, and reshaped the territory’s legal status. For many Palestinians in the West Bank, the changes have fundamentally altered their relationship with their land, their livelihoods, and their sense of security.

Since the start of 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,341 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. State-backed settler pogroms — which tend to only receive media attention when their victims are internationals — have fully or partially displaced at least 127 Palestinian communities. In the same period, the outgoing government has approved at least 103 Jewish settlements, including in the controversial E1 zone, with the stated aim of thwarting any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.

But the transformation of the West Bank cannot be measured solely through these numbers. 

In our report, we bring you the voices of Palestinians from across the territory, who are struggling to survive and resist this ongoing Nakba. Our interviewees recounted the minutiae of their daily lives, details that on their own might appear mundane but together paint a grim picture of the reality in the West Bank today: simple routines such as going to school, visiting relatives, tending farmland, or reaching a hospital have become fraught with uncertainty and danger. 

Sometimes we are stopped in our tracks by the scale of the crisis. There is so much to report on, and yet so little access to many of the Palestinian communities on the frontlines, whose stories need the most attention. I am writing this as the Israeli military is deep into a new offensive in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, collectively punishing thousands of Palestinians and causing another wave of internal displacement. The Israeli military has forced nearly 4,000 people to leave their homes and the numbers continue to climb, spelling another catastrophe.

Regardless of the election results, the Israeli policies of occupation and violence that crush the lives of Palestinians in the territory are most likely to continue. This sober recognition is coupled with our commitment to continue bringing you voices from the frontlines. Please read our West Bank reporting project and share it with friends, family, colleagues and those who need to see what is happening on the ground.