Israel arrests 50 across occupied West Bank; Jenin displaced return briefly

Multiple Israeli raids have taken place in Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas, Hebron, Jenin, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

More than 50 Palestinians have been arrested in Israeli military raids across the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office (ASRA) says, as the army’s deadly assault on the territory, in tandem with its punishing war on Gaza, escalates.

Multiple raids on Thursday took place in Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas, Hebron, Jenin, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

ASRA said children, activists and former prisoners who had been released were among those arrested. It added that raids had taken place at homes and educational institutions.

The Israeli military has also been carrying out house demolitions at a breakneck speed, disregarding international condemnation.

After months of relentless Israeli attacks on the Jenin refugee camp, some Palestinian women were allowed to briefly return, but only to quickly pack what few belongings they could, and then were forced to leave.

After applying for permission from the Israeli military, they were given 40 minutes to pack a lifetime of memories in the al-Hawashin neighbourhood of Jenin.

Nisreen Abu Zeina, a displaced woman from Jenin, said they only wanted to check on the camp and their homes.

“We pray that one day we will be back,” she told Al Jazeera. “We were searched over and over again, but we eventually managed to get to our homes that are still standing. We walked a long distance on destroyed roads, the stench was unbearable. They kept rushing us.”

Meanwhile, a Palestinian man was killed after an Israeli soldier was injured in a stabbing attack in the village of Rummanah, west of Jenin.

Hamas has released a statement, identifying the killed suspect as Ahmad Ali Amur, 55. “As we mourn the perpetrator of the attack … we affirm that this attack sends a message that all attempts by the occupation to extinguish the flames of resistance in the West Bank will fail,” said the statement.

Since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel has accelerated its violence in the occupied West Bank, killing at least 1,000 Palestinians.

As the world was distracted by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – which has killed at least 57,575 people, wounded another 136,879 and uprooted nearly the entire population of about 2 million, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry – Israel ramped up its violent raids on the West Bank, as well as its silence as Israeli settlers attack and kill Palestinian villagers.

Settlers attack with impunity

Israeli settlers, living illegally on Palestinian land, have also become more emboldened with daily rampages – sudden, violent raids on towns, burning property, attacking people, and trying to drive them out of their homes.

The Israeli military protects them, and the settlers’ campaign of violence and intimidation is carried out with impunity.

Many Israeli settlers have also been given semi-automatic weapons and “integrated”, in effect, into Israeli forces in the West Bank, to compensate for all the personnel deployed to carry out the war on Gaza.

This has blurred the lines between Israeli security forces and settlers, further empowering the latter to escalate violence against Palestinians.

To underscore this dynamic, Israeli forces helped transport mobile housing units to an empty plot of land in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, on Wednesday.

The trucks transporting the housing units were accompanied by Israeli military vehicles.

Issa Amro, coordinator of the Youth Against Settlements group, told Al Jazeera that the mobile housing units were placed in territory designated H1 – referring to the section of Hebron that is under the civil and security control of the Palestinian Authority.

He said this was the first time this had happened in Hebron, adding that it was a dangerous development.

Source:

Al Jazeera and news agencies