Israeli occupation forces detained 13 Palestinians in sweeping West Bank raids as settlers escalated coordinated land seizures and attacks on Palestinian farmland.

Israeli occupation forces carried out large-scale raids and arrests across several West Bank cities and towns on Sunday, detaining at least 13 Palestinians amid ongoing incursions and settler violence.

According to local sources, seven Palestinians were detained from Ramallah and Al-Bireh, five from Al-Khalil, and a freed detainee from Tulkarem after occupation forces stormed his home in the city’s southern neighborhood.

In Nablus, occupation troops raided and searched several homes, while similar incursions were reported in the towns of Deir Ballut and Al-Zawiya, west of Salfit. 

Meanwhile, a young Palestinian man was shot and injured by Israeli forces in the town of Al-Ram, north of occupied Al-Quds. Occupation troops also opened fire on a group of Palestinian workers near the village of Husan, west of Beit Lahm, detaining several of them for hours.

‘Emerging from the Jaws of Death’ – Settler Violence Ravages Palestine’s Olive Harvest

Settler Attacks Continue

At the same time, illegal Israeli Jewish settlers stepped up assaults on Palestinian lands across the occupied West Bank. 

Armed settler groups plowed and fenced off hundreds of dunams of agricultural land in the village of Sikka and the town of Beit Awwa, west of Al-Khalil, in what residents described as a clear attempt to seize the land.

In the Wadi Omar area, south of the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, settlers attacked Palestinian-owned farmland and prevented farmers from reaching their lands. 

The head of the Sikka village council said settlers from the illegal Neghohot settlement targeted around 500 dunams of fertile land in an effort to annex them to nearby settlement expansion zones.

Elsewhere, settlers erected fences around land in Khirbet Al-Farisiyah in the northern Jordan Valley and cut down dozens of olive trees in the village of Al-Maniya, south of Bethlehem.
These coordinated assaults come amid an ongoing campaign to impose new realities on the ground, facilitating settlement expansion across the occupied West Bank at the expense of Palestinian communities.

(PC, Al Mayadeen)