Seven Palestinian children, including two, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources. These detentions follow a surge in settler-related incidents, escalating a single day’s snapshot of activity across the occupied territory, as Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from Ramallah. Israeli military jeeps were observed constantly through Ramallah on Saturday, with soldiers utilizing tear gas inside a supermarket, a level of daily disruption deemed ‘difficult to separate from the settlement expansion driving it.’
Israeli settlers have erected another illegal outpost this week, Odeh added, the 12th such construction in the past seven days alone. The military raids that produced Saturday’s detentions spanned three governorates at once. In Tubas, forces searched a family home in the town of Tammun and detained a 16-year-old; in Nablus, four Palestinians were picked up in predawn raids on the villages of Urif, Einabus, and Burqa; and in Bethlehem, a second 16-year-old was detained in Wadi Fukin, with another man held at the Container Checkpoint. The military raids that produced Saturday’s detentions also included a search of a home in Asira ash Shamaliya, where troops stormed dozens of homes overnight and converted one into a makeshift field interrogation centre, security sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Further south, in Khashem al-Daraj near Hebron, Israeli forces chased down and detained 11 workers, beating them in the process, according to local activist Osama Makhamreh. Israeli settlers, meanwhile, were active on parallel fronts. In Surif, residents from the Bat Ayin outpost set fire to one car, damaged another, and sprayed racist graffiti on a house, the town’s mayor, Hazem Ghneimat, said. Later on Saturday, three young Palestinian men were assaulted with pepper spray on the road between al-Mughayyir and Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, after settlers rammed their vehicle with an all-terrain vehicle – an attack that village council head Amin Abu Aliya said has become almost a daily occurrence along that stretch of road. In Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, Israeli authorities forced three residents to demolish their own homes rather than face fines and costs of a state-led demolition, which, Palestinians say, is a practice routinely used to sidestep Israel’s near-total refusal to grant them building permits.
The figures echo recent United Nations warnings, including from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has stated that settler violence and forced displacement are accelerating alongside plans to expand and legalize outposts, all of which the UN maintains have no legal validity under international law. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham added his own criticism on Saturday, calling the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine ‘unacceptable’ and saying his government was weighing further measures on Israeli settlements, including possible restrictions on arms exports. These developments underscore the ongoing challenges faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, a situation significantly exacerbated by the ongoing settlement expansion and a persistent lack of legal recognition for Palestinian statehood. The Palestinian Authority estimates over 11,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone, with Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus being the worst affected.
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Source: Al Jazeera
