Palestinian children among those detained in Israeli West Bank raids
Seven Palestinians, including two children, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources
Seven Palestinians, including two children, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources. Israeli settlers separately assaulted a Palestinian man and his wife on their own farmland on Saturday. The couple was attacked in the al-Zarqa area of Beitillu, northwest of Ramallah, when a group of settlers stormed the farm where they were working, leaving both with injuries and bruising that required hospital treatment. The latest settler attacks and raids by Israeli forces are a single dayâs snapshot of activity now unfolding âin every directionâ across the occupied West Bank, said Al Jazeeraâs Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah. Odeh said Israeli military jeeps were roaming constantly through Ramallah on Saturday, as soldiers used tear gas inside a supermarket in the city. This level of everyday disruption, she said, has become difficult to separate from the settlement expansion driving it.
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 Saturdayâs 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. In the nearby town of Asira ash Shamaliya, troops went further still, storming dozens of homes overnight and converting one house 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, near Hebron, residents from the Bat Ayin outpost set fire to one car, damaged another, and sprayed racist graffiti on a house, the townâs 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 â 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 the fines and costs of a state-led demolition, which, Palestinians say, is a practice used routinely to sidestep Israelâs near-total refusal to grant them building permits. Saturdayâs events fit a pattern that rights monitors have been documenting for months.
The BriefWire