Israel Escalates Attacks on Palestinians in West Bank

Israeli Occupation Forces have been carrying out house raid campaigns across the occupied West Bank for decades. Grassroots groups and residents say the raids highlight the reality of living under colonial military rule, with no guaranteed right to privacy or safety.

For several years, even prior to October 7, human rights organizations have been releasing reports and footage exposing the systematic abuse and violence perpetrated by IOF soldiers against Palestinian civilians, including children, during house raids.

However, international institutions have failed to intervene, allowing the violence to further escalate.

IOF house raids: a lifetime nightmare for Palestinian kids

The IOF’s house raids have usually been carried out after midnight, during which masked soldiers carrying their rifles storm the bedrooms of sleeping children.

The occasional use of explosives by the IOF to detonate door locks during house raids has been reported. This act poses a real threat to the life of anyone standing at a close distance behind the door, and of course distresses residents of the house.

During some raids, Palestinian children are subjected to verbal and psychological abuse by IOF soldiers, who interrogate them, or force them to be photographed. Meanwhile, other kids are arrested, then placed in detention for hours, days, or years.

Ibrahim Abu Ghali, a 7-year-old Palestinian boy, told Al Jazeera in an interview published in March how he, his cousin Omar (13), and a number of their male relatives were arrested from his grandparents’ house in the besieged Jenin refugee camp, in the northern occupied West Bank, at dawn.

Ibrahim said that the IOF undressed him and the others in the street despite the cold weather, where he saw snipers stationed at rooftops, one of whom shot live ammunition at his grandmother, as she was looking at them from the window. They were later put in an armored vehicle, which took them to an Israeli military base, where they were detained for 12 hours.

“Any time any of us spoke, they would kick us in the back with their boots,” Ibrahim said in the interview. He added that he was deprived of sleep by a soldier, who continuously kicked the door, making him flinch as he was trying to fall asleep.

Ibrahim’s cousin Omar also mentioned that the IOF continued to beat them upon their release as they were getting into a military vehicle on their way back home. The grief of the two children was exacerbated when they arrived back at the camp to discover that their grandmother succumbed to her injuries, after she was shot by an Israeli sniper and passed away.

The IOF intensified house raids in the West Bank during Israel’s war with Iran

The 12-day war between Israel and Iran saw a drastic escalation in the IOF’s house raids in different parts of the West Bank, with a noticeable increase in violent acts by the soldiers.

Palestinian nationals, whose houses were subjected to house raids in that period, shared their testimonies with Peoples Dispatch on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses confirmed that the house raids were mainly focused on looting their money, jewelry, and valuable belongings. Such looting incidents were reported in the past, but they were less frequent, and were carried out by individual Israeli personnel discreetly.

Moreover, the IOF reportedly forced some Palestinians to evacuate their houses in the last two weeks, which they turned into military barracks for hours, and sometimes for days until they finished their raids in the area.

A young man from Jenin explained that the raid on his house was different from those conducted before the war. “They vandalized my room and other parts of the house, damaged my lighting equipment, stole a mobile phone and an expensive microphone,” he said.

“They tore down the posters of my martyred brother that were hanged in a corner inside my room, and marked my photo with an ‘X’, which I perceived as an implicit threat,” the young man added.

A woman from a village in Ramallah noted that after two hours of painstaking research at her house and nearby houses of her relatives, they discovered that a number of jewelry pieces and cash money were stolen.

“The officer who supervised the soldiers asked my husband to open the safe in front of him to allegedly check that no weapon was there. Yet, I believe that he did so as a matter of deceit, to cover the planned robbery his soldiers were carrying out in other parts of the house at the time,” the woman, who was also body searched, said.

“He wanted to maintain the fake image they have always tried to portray for themselves as ‘the most moral army in the world’,” she asserted.

She also suggested that the IOF intensified house raids amid the war for two potential reasons. First to show Palestinians, who expressed joy after seeing Iran’s missiles striking Israel, that the IOF is still strong and capable of imposing its military rule on Palestinian people, and second to loot as many assets as they could from their households.

Another woman from the same village said that the soldiers vandalized the whole house, took two of her children (11 and 10 years old) away to a separate room, where they interrogated them about their parents having weapons hidden in the house. They also asked them about the amount of money their parents might have, and where exactly they would be hiding it.

The woman mentioned being beaten by a female soldier, who accompanied her to one of the rooms to look for money. She also said that after breaking the money boxes of her children and looting them conspicuously, the IOF forced her, and her husband to sign a document written in Hebrew language, which they do not understand.

Both women recounted similar stories about their little children, who were accompanied by IOF soldiers when they needed to use the toilet. According to the women, the soldiers stood in front of the door of the toilet until the children got out. A situation that may have psychological impact on those children, being locked behind a door alone, while a soldier carrying a rifle was waiting for each of them outside.

IOF, Israeli settlers killed six Palestinians in the West Bank last week

The surging Israeli violence in the West Bank, which coincided with the war against Iran and its aftermath, has not been limited to violent house raids. At least six Palestinians were killed in the last few days by the IOF and illegal Israeli settlers in different areas of the occupied territories.

The slain Palestinians were identified as:

• Ammar Mutaz Hamayel (13) – shot dead by the IOF in the village of Kafr Malik, in the central city of Ramallah.
• Zahia Jawda Al-Obaidi (66) – shot in the head by the IOF in Shuafat refugee camp, in the northern occupied East Jerusalem.
• Rayan Tamer Houshiyeh – shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier in the town of Al-Yamoun, in Jenin.
• Lutfi Beirat (21), Murshid Hamayel (30), and Mohammad al-Naji (23) – shot dead by illegal Israeli settlers in Kafr Malik.

Bloodshed has continued in Gaza 

Although Iran dealt devastating blows to Israel during the war, it has not prevented the IOF from continuing to commit daily massacres in the besieged Gaza Strip.

After the recent massacres, the death toll in Gaza has risen to over 56,331 since Israel began its genocidal aggression in October 2023, based on the latest statement issued by Gaza’s Health Ministry on Friday, June 27.