DaysofPal – Israeli forces carried out a large-scale arrest campaign in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem on Wednesday, detaining around 50 Palestinians, most of them former prisoners, according to local sources. The raid came amid a wave of settler violence across the occupied West Bank and only hours after two Palestinian children were wounded by Israeli fire near Ramallah.
Local residents said Israeli troops raided dozens of homes in Dheisheh camp before arresting the detainees and transferring them to undisclosed locations. The operation was accompanied by heavy gunfire and clashes with local youth.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers set fire to several Palestinian vehicles in separate attacks early Wednesday. Two vehicles were torched in the Deir al-‘Asal area of Surif, north of Hebron, while others were burned in the village of Atara, north of Ramallah.
The Palestinian Commission Against the Wall and Settlements, a governmental body, said that Israeli settlers have carried out more than 7,000 attacks against Palestinians and their property since the outbreak of the Gaza war on October 8, 2023. These attacks, it said, have killed 33 Palestinians, displaced 33 Bedouin communities, and led to the establishment of 114 new settlement outposts across the West Bank.
In another incident, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire on a group of children on Tuesday evening in the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, wounding two — one in the abdomen and the other in the limbs. Eyewitnesses said the soldiers withdrew after injuring the children and raiding a nearby house.
WAFA also said Israeli forces stormed several areas in the Nablus governorate, including the villages of Qusra and Burqa, as well as the Askar refugee camp and the town of Sebastia, conducting searches and interrogations.
Over the past two years of the Gaza war, the Israeli army and settler escalation in the West Bank has led to the deaths of 1,062 Palestinians, the injury of nearly 10,000, and the arrest of more than 20,000 people, including 1,600 children, according to Palestinian data.
The violence in the West Bank has continued despite the ceasefire agreement that took effect on October 10, ending Israel’s two-year-long military campaign in Gaza. That war, launched on October 7, 2023, resulted in the killing of 68,531 Palestinians and the wounding of 170,402, most of them civilians, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
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