Israeli occupation forces carried out a fresh and wide-ranging arrest campaign from Monday evening through Tuesday morning across multiple governorates of the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, detaining no fewer than 40 Palestinian citizens.
According to field reports, the arrests were heavily concentrated in Hebron, Nablus, and Bethlehem, while additional detentions were recorded in Ramallah, Jenin, Salfit, and Qalqilya, amid repeated raids affecting dozens of population centres.
Throughout these operations, occupation forces conducted extensive field interrogations in several towns and held numerous young men for hours. The campaign was accompanied by grave violations, including physical assaults on detainees and their families, the deliberate destruction of household property, and the use of live fire with intent to kill in certain areas. In some cases, detainees were used as human shields to exert pressure on their relatives.
In accordance with international humanitarian law and human rights norms, this escalating campaign constitutes practices categorised as arbitrary detention and collective punishment, given that these arrests are not carried out under proper judicial procedures and fail to respect the basic guarantees of liberty and the right to a fair trial.
The excessive use of force during arrests and the infliction of damage on civilian property represent a blatant violation of the principle of civilian protection in occupied territories, as well as the absolute prohibition of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
In their broader context, these measures illustrate the occupation’s deliberate, daily policy of arrest aimed at weakening Palestinian societal structures and disrupting civilian life through fear and sustained pressure, in a clear breach of international norms that prohibit an occupying power from using coercive measures for the purposes of domination and subjugation.
Since the onset of the genocidal war on Gaza on 7 October 2023, occupation authorities have continued to carry out daily arrest campaigns, with the number of detentions in the West Bank alone reaching approximately 21,000 during this period, an unprecedented figure reflecting the scale of escalation and the systematic targeting of all segments of Palestinian society, including students, academics, workers, former prisoners, and activists.
This escalation comes amid rising testimonies regarding harsh conditions of detention, including torture, medical neglect, and solitary confinement, in conditions that heighten the risks to detainees’ lives and safety, in total disregard of the legal obligations requiring the occupying power to ensure the minimum protections owed to all prisoners.
The latest arrest campaign forms part of a long-standing pattern of systematic policies by which the occupation entrenches its control through force, under a deliberate legal vacuum and a retreat from humanitarian standards underscoring the urgent need for relevant international bodies to intervene, halt the ongoing violations, and ensure protection for civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
