In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the occupation army carried out a large-scale arrest campaign in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, detaining around 100 Palestinians in one of the most extensive mass-arrest operations in recent months.
According to eyewitnesses, sizeable military forces entered the town at dawn and raided dozens of homes, including the residence of the Sabarnah family, where internal belongings were smashed during the search.
Witnesses reported that the forces converted the municipal football field into an improvised detention and interrogation centre, holding dozens of detainees there after shackling them and subjecting them to questioning in open areas that fell far short of even the most basic humanitarian standards.
Video footage showed occupation soldiers escorting handcuffed Palestinians through the town’s streets; scenes that provoked widespread criticism from local activists, who denounced the “degrading treatment of detainees” and the complete absence of judicial oversight over the arrests.
The army also sealed off all entrances to the town with earth mounds and iron gates, cutting off all movement in and out and imposing a total lockdown on residents.
Since the outbreak of the war on Gaza in October 2023, the West Bank has witnessed an unprecedented escalation by the occupation army and settlers. According to Palestinian data, attacks over the past two years have resulted in the killing of no fewer than 1,076 Palestinians and the injury of more than 10,700 others, alongside the arrest of more than 20,500 people; a period marked by the expansion of administrative detention, night raids, and the closure of residential areas.
These figures point to a field reality in which violations linked to arbitrary detention, movement restrictions, and raids in densely populated neighbourhoods have grown increasingly frequent, without genuine safeguards for the protection of civilians or adherence to the principles of necessity and proportionality enshrined in international humanitarian law.
And despite the end of the war on Gaza after two full years of fighting, which left more than 69,000 Palestinians killed and over 170,000 wounded, the West Bank remains a theatre of daily operations. The ceasefire in Gaza has brought no corresponding de-escalation in the West Bank; instead, patterns of violence and arrests have persisted on a wide scale.
In the absence of effective protection mechanisms for the population, sweeping arrest operations, such as the one witnessed in Beit Ummar, appear to signal the continuation of a security policy that fails to meet even the minimal requirements for the protection of civilians, particularly in areas subjected to long-term military occupation.
