Aysar Alais, Ahmed Asmar and Rania Abu Shamala
24 May 2025•Update: 25 May 2025
RAMALLAH, Palestine/ANKARA
Israeli forces detained scores of Palestinians during military raids on Saturday, while illegal Israeli settlers also escalated attacks on Palestinian properties in separate incidents across the occupied West Bank.
In eastern Nablus city, troops stormed the Balata al-Balad area, arresting two brothers after raiding their home, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.
Another youth was detained during a separate operation in the city's Rafidiya neighborhood.
Simultaneously, illegal Israeli settlers destroyed Palestinian agricultural assets in multiple locations in the southern and eastern West Bank.
Near Hebron, they uprooted some 70 olive trees belonging to a local farmer, while near Jericho, the eastern West Bank, they razed a sheep pen and water tank in a Bedouin community, according to Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin.
In the northern West Bank, Mohammad Azem, mayor of Sebastia in Nablus Governorate, said illegal Israeli settlers from the Shavei Shomron settlement and a new outpost in the area set fire to 40 dunums of wheat-planted land in the town's plain, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
In the eastern West Bank, Hassan Mleihat, general supervisor of the non-governmental Al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights, stated that illegal Israeli settlers cut the drinking water pipes supplying the Palestinian Bedouin community of al-Auja waterfall in the Al-Auja area of Jericho and the Jordan Valley Governorate.
In the same governorate’s northern region, a group of illegal Israeli settlers stormed the Arab al-Kaabneh school earlier on Saturday and terrorized children while being protected by the Israeli army, according to a statement from the Al-Baidar organization.
Other illegal settlers also destroyed a sheep pen and a water tank used for drinking and livestock in the Arab al-Mleihat Bedouin community east of the governorate, according to another statement from Al-Baidar.
The official Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission reported 341 settler attacks in April alone against Palestinians and their properties, calling the violence systematic efforts to displace Palestinians with Israeli authorities' tacit approval.
Since the start of the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, nearly 970 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers across the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The International Court of Justice declared last July that Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal, and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
