Israeli forces have detained more than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank over the past week, including children, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) says, as pogroms continue across the occupied territory.
The Palestinian rights group, which tracks detentions and conditions in Israeli custody, said in a statement on Thursday that Israeli forces have intensified detention operations across the territory, alleging a range of abuses including field interrogations, physical assaults, threats against detainees’ families and, in some cases, extrajudicial killings.
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The group said that Israeli forces conducted extensive home raids during the operations, searching and damaging properties and, in some cases, occupying homes for military use.
It added that Palestinians were sometimes held to pressure relatives, and that entire neighbourhoods were swept during raids. Children were also arrested, it said.
Among those detained over the past week was Ahmad al-Sayfi, a former prisoner from Birzeit who had been released under a recent prisoner exchange deal, the PPS said.
Journalists Muath Amarneh and Sabri Jibril were also among those detained, along with several other former prisoners.
The PPS also said Israeli settlers carried out attacks on Palestinians and their property, including assaults, road blockades and attacks on vehicles, which it said took place with the protection of Israeli forces.
The group said Israeli forces have detained more than 25,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, and thousands more in Gaza, since Israel’s genocidal war began in October 2023.
‘Damage and destruction’
In a dawn raid on Thursday, Israeli forces arrested 15 Palestinians in the town of Burqa, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Wafa said soldiers stormed the town for six hours, raiding homes and arresting their owners before withdrawing.
Burqa, which lies northwest of Nablus city, has been subjected to frequent attacks by settlers and soldiers in recent weeks, as well as numerous home demolitions.
Israeli forces also detained Salloum Radwan, a young man from the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya, for several hours and seized his truck, Wafa reported.
Al Jazeera correspondent Givara Budeiri, reporting from Ramallah, said Israeli special forces also raided the town of Beitunia, near central Ramallah, on Thursday, entering an apartment and arresting two Palestinian men.
“They caused damage and destruction inside the home,” Budeiri said. “The two men were transferred to an Israeli prison, and the special force subsequently withdrew.”
Budeiri said Israeli forces also demolished a house in Battir, west of Bethlehem.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had arrested at least 20 Palestinians in the Arroub refugee camp, south of Bethlehem, alleging they had been planning attacks.
Budeiri also reported that settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday morning and performed religious rituals there, part of what she described as a now daily occurrence.
The Jerusalem Governorate warned that Israeli settlers could exploit upcoming Jewish holidays to shift from a longstanding time-based division of the site towards a spatial one, effectively partitioning the compound.
The Palestinian presidency and Foreign Ministry issued similar warnings, stressing that the entire site is an Islamic holy place.
Israeli police said they had deployed additional forces across occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank ahead of the holidays.
