The arrest was documented in a joint report issued on Sunday by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs (official), the Palestinian Prisoners Club (civil), and the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights (human rights).
According to the report, the Israeli occupation army arrested 442 Palestinians in the West Bank during last October, including 3 women and 33 children. The arrests were concentrated in the Bethlehem Governorate in the southern West Bank, and were accompanied by extensive field investigations in several areas of the West Bank.
The report noted that the number of arrests since October 8, 2023, reached about 20,500, including more than 595 women and more than 1,630 children. It continued: “The number of martyrs of the prisoner movement in Israeli prisons since the start of the war of extermination (in Gaza) has risen to 81 martyrs, including three who died during last October.”
According to the report, "Field visits conducted to dozens of Palestinian prisoners during October showed that the crimes committed against them remain at the same level as since the outbreak of the war, and have escalated again following the announcement of the ceasefire agreement and the completion of the exchange deal (last October 10)."
The report indicated that "the number of detainees in Israeli prisons has reached more than 9,250, the majority of whom are administrative detainees and prisoners, and this does not include detainees held in camps belonging to the occupation army."
Palestinian and Israeli organizations have repeatedly spoken of serious violations against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, including starvation, torture, medical neglect, as well as sexual assaults and denial of visits.
Meanwhile, Palestinians released by Israel spoke of being subjected to systematic torture, and showed signs of abuse, along with severe weight loss as a result of the starvation policy.
Demolition of a prisoner's house
In the same context, the Israeli occupation army demolished, on Sunday, the home of a Palestinian prisoner in the town of Bruqin, west of the city of Salfit in the northern occupied West Bank.
The mayor of Burqin, Faed Sabra, said that Israeli forces, accompanied by a bulldozer, stormed the town, surrounded the house of prisoner Maher Zuhair Samara, who is in Israeli prisons, and demolished it, while preventing citizens from approaching the area. He pointed out that the Israeli occupation army had previously stormed the same house months ago and notified the family to evacuate it in preparation for its demolition after recording its area.
Sabra reported that on October 23, the Israeli occupation army demolished the home of the father of prisoner Maher and his brother Jamil, who is also detained in Israeli prisons, after notifying them of its evacuation. He pointed out that the demolition was carried out under the pretext of their connection to “the perpetrator of a shooting operation near the town, Nael Samara, on the 14th of the same month,” which at the time led to the killing of an Israeli settler.
On May 17, the Israeli occupation army killed Nael Samara and is still holding his body, while on September 14, they demolished his family’s house.
According to United Nations data, the Israeli occupation army carried out 83 punitive demolition operations in the West Bank simultaneously during the two years of genocide.
Palestinians in the West Bank are subjected to attacks as part of a broad Israeli escalation by the occupation army and settlers, which has resulted in the martyrdom of at least 1,069 Palestinians and the injury of about 10,000, since Tel Aviv, with American support, began the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip on October 8, 2023.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza over two years left more than 69,000 Palestinian martyrs and more than 170,000 wounded, most of them children and women, and caused destruction to 90% of the civilian infrastructure, with reconstruction costs estimated by the United Nations at about $70 billion.
A ceasefire agreement has been in place between Hamas and Israel since October 10, but the latter violates it daily, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian martyrs and wounded, as well as restricting the entry of food and medical supplies.