The office explained in a statement that among those arrested was former MP Hatem Qafisha from Hebron Governorate in the southern West Bank, noting that the arrests were accompanied by raids on homes and the destruction of their contents .
The statement added that the escalating targeting of children, released prisoners, and elected representatives reflects the use of detention as a tool for repression and collective punishment.
In a related context, on Thursday, Israeli occupation forces demolished a house in the town of Beit Awa, west of Hebron, after storming the “Is’ida” area and completely closing it off.
The mayor of Beit Awa, Muhammad al-Musallama, reported that Israeli bulldozers destroyed a two-story house with an area of approximately 600 square meters, which included shops and a floor under construction.
In parallel, the occupation authorities began implementing a project to build a new settlement road, called “Route 45”, north of occupied Jerusalem, linking settlements north of Jerusalem and east of Ramallah to the city of Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Governorate stated that the road extends for about 5 kilometers in its current phase, within a network of bypass roads aimed at tightening the noose around Jerusalem and isolating it from its Palestinian surroundings, and changing the geographical and demographic character of the area, after seizing about 280 dunams of Palestinian land, at an estimated cost of 400 million shekels.
This comes amid an unprecedented Israeli escalation in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, which included killing, arrest, displacement and settlement expansion, resulting in more than 1,112 martyrs, about 11,500 wounded, and the arrest of more than 21,000 Palestinians.
