Military operations in Tubas and Nablus coincide with illegal settler violence during olive harvest; over 20,000 Palestinians arrested since war in Gaza began.
GAZA CITY — The Israeli army detonated a home and arrested 10 Palestinians in military raids in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, local media and witnesses said.
The state news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces raided dozens of homes and blew up a residential apartment in Tubas in the northern West Bank before withdrawing from the area.
A similar raid was staged in the same city on Saturday, with Israeli forces closing its southern entrance with barriers, and carrying out bulldozing operations in the city centre.
According to Kamal Bani Odeh, the director of the Palestinian Prisoner Society in Tubas, the army held several residents for field interrogation in the city.
In Nablus in the northern West Bank, six Palestinians were detained by the Israeli army after raids on their homes, Wafa said.
Four more people, including parliamentarian and academic Omar Abd al-Razaq, were taken into Israeli custody in the northern city of Salfit.
Meanwhile, illegal Israeli settlers, under the protection of the army, attacked Palestinian farmers while harvesting olive trees in Ramallah and Nablus and burned two vehicles, witnesses said.
According to data by the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, illegal Israeli settlers carried out 7,154 assaults on Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank over the course of two years, which resulted in the death of 34 Palestinians and forced migration of 33 Bedouin communities.
Local authorities said that more than 1,051 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, around 10,300 wounded, and over 20,000 arrested, including 1,600 children, since the Gaza war began two years ago.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. — Anadolu Agency
