For decades, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation have documented killings, arrests, humiliation, movement restrictions, settler violence and the destruction of homes and livelihoods.
Their testimonies have often struggled to translate into meaningful international accountability.
Now, two Israeli-produced accounts — one examining the occupied West Bank and the other Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza — are placing those experiences under renewed scrutiny while provoking fierce opposition from within Israel itself.
On September 14, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem released The Elimination Project: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Collective Life in the West Bank, a major report drawing on more than 2,000 Palestinian testimonies collected since October 2023 and more than three decades of the organisation’s documentation.
Four days earlier, Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor premiered NAZA, an 80-minute documentary examining the systems and decision-making processes behind Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, based on testimony from 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders.
The projects are markedly different. One is built largely around Palestinian testimony from life under occupation. The other looks inside Israel’s military and intelligence structures.
Together, however, they raise a difficult question: what happens when allegations Palestinians have made for years are increasingly documented not only by Palestinians, but also by Israeli human rights organisations, soldiers and intelligence personnel?
More than 2,000 Palestinian testimonies
B’Tselem’s report argues that the violence and restrictions Palestinians experience in the occupied West Bank should not be understood simply as a collection of isolated incidents.
Instead, the organisation describes what it calls an interconnected system aimed at dismantling the conditions necessary for Palestinians to continue living collectively in the territory while expanding and entrenching Israeli control.
The report identifies several mechanisms operating together: violence and intimidation, restrictions on movement, economic pressure, political and social repression, forced displacement and the takeover of Palestinian land.
B’Tselem says these measures increasingly involve cooperation between Israeli state authorities, soldiers and armed settlers.
Its documentation includes accounts of Palestinians being arrested, beaten, humiliated and subjected to abuse.
One section focuses on detention. B’Tselem says thousands of Palestinians have been arrested since October 2023 and cites testimony alleging violence, humiliation, deprivation, deliberate starvation, denial of medical treatment and other forms of abuse inside Israeli detention facilities.
It also documents incidents outside prisons, including accounts from Palestinians in Hebron who said they were detained at checkpoints, taken to military posts and assaulted before being released without charge.
For B’Tselem, these are not disconnected episodes. The organisation argues that they form part of a wider structure affecting almost every dimension of Palestinian life.
From restrictions to territorial control
The report also examines the physical transformation of the occupied West Bank.
B’Tselem says that by July 2026, Israel, through settler militias, had taken control of more than 1.07 million dunams — approximately 18% of the West Bank.
It says 64 Palestinian communities and shepherding hamlets had been expelled from their homes by June 2026, while another 18 had been partially expelled.
The organisation argues that settlement expansion, restrictions on movement, violence and displacement are steadily changing the conditions under which Palestinian communities can remain on their land.
The consequences extend far beyond individual confrontations.
They affect whether Palestinians can reach their homes, schools, healthcare facilities, workplaces and agricultural land; whether families can move between communities; and ultimately whether those communities can continue functioning collectively.
In that sense, B’Tselem presents the issue not simply as one of individual human rights violations, but as a struggle over whether Palestinian society can continue to exist and develop across the occupied West Bank.
Then came NAZA
Four days before the B’Tselem report was released, another Israeli-produced account of Palestinian suffering reached an international audience.
Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor premiered NAZA at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 10.
The 80-minute documentary examines the systems behind Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza and is built around anonymous interviews with 24 people who served within Israeli military and intelligence structures.
Its title is drawn from an Israeli military term referring to anticipated civilian casualties in an attack.
The filmmakers use the testimony to explore how targets are identified, how intelligence is processed and how expected civilian deaths are factored into military decision-making.
The film received an approximately 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere and later won the festival’s Special Jury Prize.
Its reception was significant not only because of the international attention it attracted, but because its directors are Israeli and much of the testimony comes from people who served inside Israel’s military and intelligence establishment.
Israeli officials reject the allegations
The documentary has triggered a fierce reaction from senior Israeli officials.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the film as “shocking” and accused its creators of contributing to international hostility towards Israel.
The Israeli military has also rejected the allegations, saying the documentary contains serious and false claims about the IDF and its personnel.
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir accused the film of relying on “blood libels” and “deliberate distortions of reality” and ordered military legal officials to examine possible action relating to the film.
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar went further, calling for authorities to examine revoking the Israeli citizenship of Abraham and Szor and accusing the filmmakers of betraying the state.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has similarly denounced NAZA as propaganda, while Israeli officials have challenged allegations concerning the number of civilian casualties that could be authorised in individual strikes and questioned the reliance on anonymous testimony.
The filmmakers have defended their reporting and sources.
The dispute has therefore moved beyond the documentary’s factual claims.
It has also become a debate inside Israel about whether filmmakers, journalists and military insiders should publicly investigate allegations concerning the conduct of the Israeli military during the war in Gaza.
Two forms of documentation
B’Tselem’s report and NAZA approach Palestinian suffering from very different directions.
B’Tselem places Palestinian voices at the centre, drawing on thousands of testimonies from people living under occupation and more than three decades of documentation in the West Bank.
NAZA turns inward, examining Israel’s military machinery through testimony from Israelis who worked inside it.
Neither replaces the testimony Palestinians themselves have given for decades.
But their significance lies partly in the fact that allegations concerning Palestinian suffering are increasingly being investigated and documented from within Israeli society — by human rights researchers, filmmakers, soldiers and intelligence personnel.
That has placed Israel’s political and military establishment in direct confrontation not only with Palestinian accusations, but with Israelis documenting and amplifying them.
The question facing the world
At the launch of B’Tselem’s report, executive director Yuli Novak called on the international community to move beyond statements of concern.
“Every day without meaningful action gives Israel more time to deepen this project and make it harder to reverse,” she said.
That warning speaks to the wider question raised by both projects.
The issue is no longer simply whether allegations of killing, displacement, abuse and destruction are being documented. Palestinians have documented those experiences for decades.
The question is what happens when the evidence continues to accumulate — from Palestinians living under occupation, from Israeli human rights organisations and increasingly from people who have worked within Israel’s own military and intelligence structures — while meaningful accountability remains elusive.
The testimonies are reaching the world.
What the world does with them is another question.
