Palestinians face mass arrests, displacement in the occupied territory as Netanyahu pushes settlement expansion.
Israeli forces have sealed off entrances to Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank, further escalating a campaign of raids, arrests and collective punishment that has displaced thousands of Palestinians as the military relentlessly destroys Gaza.
Footage from Thursday night shared by residents showed soldiers marching Palestinians in lines through the streets in what many described as a humiliating show of force.
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Tulkarem Governor Abdullah Kamil appealed to the international community on Friday, urging the United Nations General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and humanitarian groups to act against what he called “crimes” being committed against the city’s nearly 100,000 residents.
Kamil said Israeli forces were “arbitrarily and unjustly” carrying out mass arrests, storming homes, destroying property and “terrorising children and women”, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
On Thursday, Israeli forces in Tulkarem were allegedly struck by what Israel called an explosive device that injured two Israeli soldiers.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Doha, described “videos of the Israeli forces dragging hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians from their homes, from their cafes, from even a garage … in a show of humiliation”.
“They’re trying to remind everyone that if there is any incident in any place in the occupied West Bank that they do not like … they’re going to crack down, not just on the perpetrators … but on everyone in that vicinity,” said Ibrahim.
She added that Israel’s crackdown has displaced “tens of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes … rendering the city, the refugee camps into ghost towns”. Ibrahim said Palestinians see this as part of a broader policy, with Israeli forces trying “to crack down on Palestinians and really … remind them who has the upper hand and control in the occupied West Bank”.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, five young Palestinians were shot and wounded by Israeli forces in the village of Deir Jarir, Wafa reported. One of the injured was arrested before receiving medical treatment, according to the village council. Israeli soldiers also closed the village entrance for several hours.
Israeli troops stormed Nablus and the nearby town of Beit Furik at dawn on Friday, raiding several neighbourhoods in the Old City and surrounding areas.
Witnesses said shops were ransacked, while in Beitin, east of Ramallah, Israeli soldiers seized a house and converted it into a military barracks.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the raids, saying international silence had emboldened Israel to press ahead with unilateral measures aimed at destabilising the territory.
‘There will be no Palestinian state’
The escalation comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advances an illegal settlement expansion plan that would all but eliminate the possibility of a Palestinian state.
On Thursday, he signed an agreement to push forward with construction in the so-called E1 area near the illegal Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, several kilometres to the east of Jerusalem.
“We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us,” Netanyahu declared at the signing ceremony, adding: “We are going to double the city’s population.”
The project, which has been driven by far-right ministers in the government, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, covers a 12sq km (4.6sq mile) stretch of land and foresees 3,400 new homes for Israeli settlers. Critics say the plan would cut off large parts of the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem while linking together major settlement blocs.
Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Under international law, all Israeli settlements in occupied territory are illegal, regardless of whether they have Israeli government approval.