General

IOF Arrests 45 Palestinian Civilians, Murders Palestinian Elderly in West Bank

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested at least 45 Palestinian civilians today morning, within an operation that started yesterday in the West Bank.

In a joint statement, Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said the IOF arrested several freed captives, indicating that, among the detainees is a former Palestinian female captive – one of the female hostages who was released during one of the hostage exchange deals.

The arrests took place across the West Bank’s governorates of Al-Khalil, Occupied Jerusalem (Al-Quds), Ariha, Bethlehem, Qalqiliya, Nablus and Jenin, the statement said, adding that the ongoing arrest operation was accompanied by field executions and direct shooting.

The IOF stormed the home of the Palestinian elderly Sheikh Ziyad Abu Halil in Al-Khalil, after which the Israeli soldiers brutally murdered him by savagely beating him to death. The IOF also practiced severe beating of detainees and their families, along with
field investigations and widespread vandalism of homes, and brazen theft of Palestinians’ cars, money, and belongings in general.

The IOF has arrested more than 11,100 Palestinian civilians across the governorates of the West Bank (including Al-Quds), since the beginning of the Israeli occupation’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, the statement added, pointing out that these arrests included all segments of the Palestinian society, in addition to the arrest of dozens of Palestinian workers and thousands more from Gaza.

These arrest operations come in light of the unprecedented genocide that the Israeli occupation is committing against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as a retaliatory operation that falls within the framework of the crime of collective punishment that Israel is committing against Palestinians. The policy of systematic arrests is one of the Israeli occupation’s most prominent established policies, used by the occupation to undermine any kind of resistance against it.

Source: Qatar News Agency