Israel arrests 25 more Palestinians in West Bank raids

The Israeli army rounded up 25 more Palestinians in military raids in the occupied West Bank, prisoners’ affairs groups said on Sunday, Anadolu news agency reported.

According to a joint statement by the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners Society, the new arrests brought the total number of Palestinians detained by Israeli forces since 7 October  – when the current Gaza conflict began – to 8,575.

The arrests mainly took place in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin, Jericho, Qalqilya, Jerusalem, and Tulkarm, and especially in the town of Deir Al-Ghusun, which saw an Israeli incursion on Saturday, resulting in the killing of at least six Palestinians.

During the Israeli arrest campaigns, the Israeli forces beat and abused Palestinians and damaged their homes and property, the statement also said.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since the 7 October Hamas incursion, which killed around 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Tel Aviv, in comparison, has killed more than 34,600 Palestinians and wounded 77,700 others amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities in the Palestinian Territory.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85 per cent of the enclave’s population into internal displacement besides a crippling blockade on food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

READ: Israeli army storms town in occupied West Bank