War between Israel and Hamas: Blinken heads to the Middle East with the aim of defusing tensions

The Palestinian Prisoners Club, a non-governmental rights organization, said in a statement that Israeli forces made the arrests in Nur Shams, a neighborhood near the city of Tulkarem. It said Israeli forces had transferred more than 100 Palestinians to another area and interrogated an estimated 500 people, including women and children.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman, said the operation in Nur Shams lasted more than 40 hours and “destroyed many explosives and detained dozens of terror suspects.”

Wafa Awwad, a journalist for the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, was among those arrested, according to his outlet and the Palestinian Prisoners Club. Palestinian news media reported raids in Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus and Jenin, among others, in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health reported that Asid Jawad Bani Odeh, 29, was shot in the chest and killed during a raid by Israeli forces in Tamun, a village in the northern West Bank.

Photos from Nur Shams and Sir, a village near Jenin, showed residents of both locations surveying the damage from the clashes on Thursday. They inspected scorched and crumbling buildings, and windows and walls pierced by bullets.

Although the war between Israel and Hamas has been concentrated in the Gaza Strip since it began almost three months ago, violence has also increased in the West Bank. The Israeli army has carried out numerous attacks raids in the West Bank, some of them deadly, and has made thousands of arrests. Violence between Palestinians and Israeli civilians in the area has escalated.

During a visit to the West Bank on Thursday, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, said the Israeli army will fight terrorism wherever it occurs.

“We remain focused on eliminating the threat posed by Hamas, but we do not forget that our goal is to eliminate terrorist threats from all our borders,” he said, according to Israeli news channel N12.

He added that the protection of Israeli settlements was a “central issue,” and that Israeli forces had expanded their presence in the area.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 war, are considered illegal by the United States and many other countries around the world. The United Nations and many Palestinians view the area as part of a future Palestinian state, which has become increasingly untenable due to the settlements.

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government came to power a year ago, it approved permits for 13,000 new homes and has pushed to expand settlements in the West Bank.

Settler violence against Palestinians increased before the war and has escalated sharply since October 7, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel. The Palestinian Health Ministry has said there have been 313 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 7 in clashes with Israeli forces armed extremist settlers.

On Wednesday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi condemned the attacks on the West Bank on social media and warned that “everyone will pay the price” for the failure to curb extremism.

“Inflaming the West Bank and Lebanon is the goal of the extremist agenda of the Israeli government, which continues to destroy Gaza to extend its political leadership and drag the West into a regional war,” he said.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club has said arrests have taken place in the West Bank driven The number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has risen to the highest level in fourteen years. Many of those arrested are being held without charge or trial.

Talya Minsberg And Abu Bakr Bashir translation contributed.