By Ali Karbalaei
Israeli forces have detained 7,530 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7
TEHRAN- Alongside settler attacks, the Israeli military has unleashed a brutal wave of violence in the occupied West Bank over the past five months, detaining thousands of Palestinians, killing hundreds more and expanding illegal settlements.
As media focus on the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza intensifies, with the latest disturbing reports saying the regime’s army has tortured 27 Palestinian detainees to death inside military detention camps, news of deadly Israeli violence in the West Bank has been largely overshadowed.
According to the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Israeli forces have gone on a mass detention campaign in the West Bank, violently rounding up at least 7,530 Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
A joint report by the two organizations says the number of Palestinian women who have been detained has reached 240, while 500 Palestinian children have also been arrested by the occupation forces.
The mass arrest campaign has taken place across the West Bank, its refugee camps, and in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem).
The United Nations has also warned of the sharp rise in settler violence and the record number of illegal settlements that have been approved lately by Tel Aviv.
The Israeli regime expanded its occupation to the West Bank and al-Quds in 1967, paving the way for more settlers to grab Palestinian lands in violation of international law and in defiance of global condemnation.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has warned that Israeli settlements have expanded by a record level.
“Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumim, Efrat and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” Turk said.
The UN commissioner also raised alarm over Israeli military assaults and settler violence, which he warned have reached “shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State”.
According to UN data, between October 7, 2023, and March 8, 2024, 417 Palestinians, including 106 children, have been killed in the West Bank and al-Quds. The statement by Turk along with a report will be presented before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in late March.
The report warns that the policies of the Israeli government are aligned “to an “unprecedented extent” with the goals of the Israeli settler movement.
The Israeli settler movement seeks to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population in the West Bank by pushing them into neighboring Jordan and replacing the territory’s population with Jewish settlers.
Some ministers under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet have gone further by seeking to expand the settlements into much of or all of Jordan.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who squat on illegal settlements, have made such remarks over the past year.
The push to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the West Bank, along with other deadly crimes and vandalism by Israeli forces and settlers, has been met with a surge in resistance from Palestinian civilians who have fought back, at times, with an armed struggle.
The UN Human Rights chief also documented cases of “settlers wearing full or partial Israeli army uniforms and carrying army rifles while harassing or attacking Palestinians. Sometimes, they (Palestinians) were shot at point-blank range.”
The report highlights the dramatic increase in the “intensity, severity and regularity” of Israeli settler and government-backed army violence against Palestinians, particularly since October 7.
According to UN data, between October 7, 2023, and March 8, 2024, 417 Palestinians, including 106 children, have been killed in the West Bank and al-Quds.
Since the beginning of this year, at least 102 Palestinians have been killed already, the majority by the Israeli military.
Furthermore, the Israeli army and settlers have injured nearly 5,000 Palestinians, including 720 children since October 7. Other monitoring groups put this number between 7,500 and 8,500.
Last year, at least 507 Palestinians, including more than 81 children, were killed in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas presence and no Israeli captives are being held.
This has received little media coverage when taking into account the rolling coverage of the war in Ukraine, where, according to UN figures, there were 554 civilian deaths.
Even before October 7, the West Bank had already surpassed the deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN started keeping track of casualties in 2005.
Meanwhile, reports have recently surfaced in Israeli media that suggest the number of Israeli forces deployed to the West Bank and al-Quds for the month of Ramadan is twice as many as the forces deployed in the entire Gaza Strip.
Ramadan is a time for worship when tens of thousands of Palestinians from across the West Bank head to the al-Aqsa Mosque in al-Quds to pray despite extremely harsh Israeli restrictions.
The regime’s regular brutal crackdowns on Palestinians at the holy site, especially during Ramadan, have led to wars between the Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza and the Israeli regime for more than two decades.
Israeli media further reported that the occupation will deploy 15,000 troops and paramilitary police, 5,000 reserve troops, 24 battalions, and 20 squadrons of the “border police”, in addition to two units of special forces.
One of the main reasons Hamas said it staged Operation al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 was the increasing levels of desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli settlers over the past years and the heavy-handed crackdown on Palestinian men and women at Islam’s third holiest site.
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