Israel makes new arrests amid settler attacks, issues verdicts to seize more land

The Israeli occupation forces launched a number of armed incursions on Thursday across the occupied West Bank and al-Quds, arresting a number of young Palestinian men, amid ongoing illegal settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in Nablus and al-Khalil.

Israeli soldiers arrested thirteen Palestinians who were taken away for interrogation, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club. They face charges of participating in acts of popular resistance against the violence of the settlers and the occupation forces.

The arrests come in reaction to the double bombing in which one Israeli settler was killed and nearly a dozen injured in occupied al-Quds, in what some Israeli analysts said could be the beginning of a third Intifada.

Media reports said that other armed incursions took place in the town of Azzun in the Qalqilya district, and Husan in the Bethlehem governorate.

Montaser Abu Rumaila, a Palestinian boy was also arrested after being assaulted by security forces near the Karantina checkpoint in al-Khalil

Meanwhile, Palestinian medical sources reported that two women were injured as a result of settlers attacking Palestinian homes in Khirbet Beit Iskaria, which is surrounded by the illegal Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Gangs of settlers also attacked Palestinian homes in the Kasara area, south of Hebron. 

New Israeli land grab in West Bank

The Israeli civil administration issued a permission on Wednesday for 80 acres of Palestinian land in the central occupied West Bank seized in 1984 to be annexed to the illegal Israeli Tal Shahrit settlement outpost.

The administration has declared the area to be "state land" in a move which effectively grants legal recognition to the outpost by the occupation state.

According to the Commission, the land belonged to Palestinians in the villages of Bidya and Kafr Al-Dik in Salfit Governorate.

Recently on Thursday, Netanyahu's Likud has agreed to the demand of far-right lawmaker and head of the Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich to head the civil administration, the military agency that has broad powers in the West Bank, including home demolitions and lands confiscation.

More than 250 illegal settlements have been built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

Another four month of solitary confinement

In a separate development, a young Palestinian prisoner, Ahmed Manasra, was ordered to another four months in solitary confinement on 24 November 2022 by an occupation court. Manasra has been imprisoned for over seven years, since he was 13 years old.

Ahmad watched his cousin shot dead by settlers before his eyes, suffered a critical injury, experienced torture and harsh interrogation while separated from his parents, and then was held for years in occupation prisons, which made him suffer serious psychological illness.

Solitary confinement of over 15 days is considered a form of torture as well as his psychological vulnerabilities. His lawyer, Khaled Zabarqa, noted that he had recently visited Manasra and that his life and health are at severe risk.

As reported by the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Samidoun, Ahmad’s case represents the struggle of the nearly 700 children every year who are brought before occupation military courts — not to mention the many more who are subjected to violent night raids, torture and abuse, solitary confinement, settler invasions, home demolitions, abductions of family members, siege, extrajudicial killings and other violations from their earliest moments in life.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at detentions.

Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards.

Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.

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