The Israeli occupation army arrested 40 Palestinians, including former detainees, from different areas of the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, while the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s storming of the Jordan Valley.
A joint statement issued by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (non-governmental) and the Prisoners Affairs Authority (governmental) on Thursday said that the Israeli army has arrested at least 40 Palestinians from the West Bank since Wednesday evening, including former detainees.
The statement said that the arrests were concentrated in the governorates of Hebron (south) and Tubas (north), while the rest of the arrests were distributed across most of the governorates of the West Bank.
He added that the Israeli army continues to carry out wide-scale raids, abuse, attacks and threats against detainees and their families during arrest campaigns, in addition to field investigations, vandalism and destruction of homes.
The total number of detainees in the West Bank since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7th has reached more than 10,700 citizens from the West Bank, including Jerusalem. The tally does not include detainees from the Gaza Strip, according to previous data from the Prisoners Club.
Raids and incursions
Today, Thursday, hundreds of settlers – under the protection of the occupation forces – stormed the town of Awarta, southeast of the city of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, to perform Talmudic prayers in the archaeological sites in the center of the old town.
The occupation forces had stormed the town earlier to provide protection for the settlers, which led to clashes between the city’s youth and the occupation forces.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent reported that the occupation forces demolished a house in the village of Al-Walaja, northwest of Bethlehem, and also demolished a house under construction without prior warning in the Farsh Al-Hawa area, north of Hebron.
The occupation authorities justified the demolition decision on the grounds that the house, which was supposed to house a family of nine, was built without a permit. The owners of the house had obtained a decision from the Israeli court to stop the demolition orders a year ago.
On the other hand, the Palestinian Red Crescent said that the Israeli occupation forces prevented ambulance crews from entering Tulkarm camp to transport patients.
Large numbers of settlers, under the protection of the occupation forces, storm the town of Awarta, east of Nablus, to perform Talmudic rituals. pic.twitter.com/WPpIxrQDJV
— Palestinian Information Center (@PalinfoAr) September 11, 2024
Condemning Netanyahu’s visit to the Jordan Valley
On another note, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the occupied Jordan Valley, considering it a systematic deepening of the annexation of the West Bank and an explosion of the situation there.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu visited the border area with Jordan, accompanied by Israeli army commanders, and announced his intention to build a wall on the border with Jordan to prevent what he claimed were attempts to smuggle weapons and fighters from the kingdom to the West Bank and Israel, in a revival of a project that was previously proposed about 20 years ago.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it condemns the provocative incursion committed by Netanyahu yesterday (Wednesday) into the Jordan Valley under flimsy pretexts and excuses that will not be able to hide the colonial settlement dimension of the occupation’s plans aimed at swallowing up the Jordan Valley and emptying it of its original owners.
She considered that this “represents a translation of the official Israeli incitement practiced by Netanyahu and his team from the right and the extreme right on the path to exploding the situation in the occupied West Bank, through escalating the aggression against our people, with the ongoing crimes it causes.”
Also condemning the arrest of a patient
In the same context, the Palestinian Ministry of Health condemned, today, Thursday, the kidnapping of a patient by an Israeli special force from a hospital in the town of Halhul in the Hebron Governorate in the southern occupied West Bank.
The ministry said in a press statement that a special Israeli force in civilian clothes stormed President Mahmoud Abbas Hospital in the town of Halhul at midnight last night, armed with automatic weapons, and raided the hospital’s internal medicine department, and kidnapped the patient, Ayham Al-Saadi.
The statement quoted the Director General of Hospitals, Haitham Al-Hadri, as saying that the patient was in an isolation room, and his health condition was critical, after 4 operations were performed and more than 7 fractures in the lower limbs were fixed, as well as muscle and ligament tears and bone rupture, with tissue and skin loss in the left thigh.
Al-Hadry explained that the patient was still suffering from ulcers and severe inflammation in the area of the operations, in addition to the spread of bacteria in the blood, and that he was suffering from severe emaciation and weight loss. He said that his kidnapping posed an imminent danger to his life.
Yesterday, Wednesday, eyewitnesses confirmed that a special Israeli force disguised in a civilian vehicle arrived at Mahmoud Abbas Governmental Hospital in Halhul and arrested one of its patients.
In a joint statement issued by the Israeli police, the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and the army, they said that the special police units (Yamam) and the General Security Service (Shin Bet) “arrested a suspect involved in the detonation of a car bomb.”
The statement added that “the wanted suspect was injured during the car bombing, and the forces arrested him last night inside a hospital in Halhul, where he was receiving treatment for his injury.”
In parallel with its war on Gaza, the Israeli occupation army expanded its operations and the settlers escalated their attacks in the West Bank, resulting in the martyrdom of 703 and the injury of about 5,700, in addition to the detainees, according to official Palestinian institutions.
While his devastating war on Gaza, which enjoys American support, left more than 136 thousand Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10 thousand missing, amidst massive destruction and deadly famine.
