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Israeli troops search Palestinians who attempted to enter the camp to retrieve their belongings as Israeli army continues its attacks on the Nur Shams Camp in the city of Tulkarem in the West Bank on December 17, 2025. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
At least 40 Palestinians were rounded up by the Israeli army in military raids across the occupied West Bank, a prisoners’ rights group said Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.
A child and former prisoners were among the detainees in the raids that targeted the cities of Salfit, Jenin, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Hebron, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement.
Israeli forces stormed several houses, carried out abusive acts targeting Palestinians, and vandalized their properties during the raids, the statement said.
Witnesses told Anadolu that special Israeli forces, backed by military reinforcements, stormed the eastern neighborhood of Jenin city at dawn and turned a house into a military outpost.
Following the raid, the Palestinian Education Ministry suspended schools in Jenin to maintain the safety of students.
According to Palestinian figures, nearly 21,000 people have been detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
In the central West Bank, illegal Israeli settlers burned two vehicles belonging to Palestinians in Ramallah and painted racist slogans on the walls of homes, local sources told Anadolu.
The Israeli army has escalated its attacks in the occupied West Bank since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 1,097 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, injured nearly 11,000, and detained around 21,000 since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Palestinian Catholics attend Christmas mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on December 24, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace,” said one little girl whose grandmother was killed by an Israeli sniper.
Palestinian Catholics attend Christmas mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on December 24, 2024.
(Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Another Somber Christmas in Palestine as Gaza Genocide Continues
“I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace,” said one little girl whose grandmother was killed by an Israeli sniper.
From the illegally occupied “little town of Bethlehem” in the West Bank to a pair of churches in Gaza where Israel’s bombs and bullets have killed clerics and congregants alike, Palestinian Christians marked another somber Christmas amid a relentless Israeli assault whose victims on Wednesday included refugees sheltering in tents and medical staff and patients at a besieged hospital.
For the second year in a row, public Christmas celebrations were canceled at the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, which is built over the spot where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.
“This should be a time of joy and celebration. But Bethlehem is a sad town in solidarity with our siblings in Gaza,” Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac said during his Christmas sermon at a church whose nativity display again had baby Jesus lying in a pile of rubble.
“It’s hard to believe that another Christmas has come upon us and the genocide has not stopped,” Isaac added. “Decision-makers are content to let this continue. To them, Palestinians are dispensable.”
In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian Christians huddled in two churches amid ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
“This year, we will conduct our religious rites and that’s it,” Ramez Souri told The New York Times at the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City. “We’re still in mourning and far too sad to celebrate, or do anything except to pray for peace.”
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering on the grounds of the 12th century church—Gaza’s oldest—when Israeli forces bombed it in October 2023, killing 18 people including Souri’s three children and relatives of former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
In a pre-Christmas homily at Holy Family Church in Gaza City—Gaza’s only Catholic church— Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told congregants, “You have become the light of our church in the entire world.”
“At Christmas, we celebrate the light and ask: Where is this light?” Pizzaballa continued. “The light is here, in this church.”
“I don’t know when or how this war will end, and every time we approach the end, it seems like we start anew,” he added. “But sooner or later, the war will end, and we must not lose hope. When the war ends, we will rebuild everything: our schools, our hospitals, and our homes. We must remain resilient and full of strength.”
Like St. Porphyrius, Holy Family has suffered a deadly Israeli attack. Last December, an Israeli sniper shot Nahida Khalil Anton, the elderly matriarch of the largest Catholic family in Gaza, as she crossed a courtyard in the church compound on her way to the bathroom. Her daughter Samar was shot in the head when she rushed out to try and help her mother.
Both women died. Seven other people were shot and wounded. Israeli soldiers and veterans have said that they were given permission and even orders to shoot anyone who moves in parts of Gaza.
"I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace." A Christian Palestinian girl in Gaza wishes for peace on Christmas Day amid Israel's war, at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
On Sunday, Pope Francis—who in a new book called for a genocide investigation of Israel’s war on Gaza—said: “Yesterday, children have been bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war.”
The cruelty continued on Christmas as Israeli attacks throughout Gaza killed at least 13 people, according to officials. The dead include people sheltering in a tent northwest of Khan Younis, Palestine Red Crescent Society volunteer Alaa al-Derawi—who was shot in the chest while at work transporting patients—and Walaa al-Faranji, a well-known fashion designer, author, and photographer who was killed along with her husband Ahmed Salama in an airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Local media also reported continued Israeli shelling and attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where staff and scores of patients including premature babies have endured weeks of siege conditions.
All told, Gaza and international agencies say that at least 45,361 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and more than 107,800 others wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thousands more people have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Last month, the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, as well as for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Back at St. Porphyrius, parishioners pooled what little food they could find to prepare a communal Christmas Eve meal. Although many Gazan Christians have expressed fears that their community—one of the oldest Christian communities in the world—could be wiped out by Israel’s genocidal onslaught, the holiday meal represented a faint glimmer of hope.
“We wanted to do something to show that we’re still here,” Souri explained, “despite it all.”
Israeli occupation forces obstructing the work of ambulances in Jenin. (Photo: Mohammad Mansour/WAFA)
Over 500 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023. Under its undeclared policy of collective punishment, Israel also destroyed a significant amount of civilian infrastructure such as roads, residential buildings, and hospitals in West Bank since October 7
Israel’s war on Gaza has entered its fourth month. It has killed over 23,000 Palestinians in the besieged enclave and injured around 60,000. Nearly 80% of all Gazans have been displaced due to the constant bombings. The amount of destruction and killing in Gaza is horrendous. The offensive has also extended to the West Bank where Palestinians have been facing a form of undeclared collective punishment both before and since the war in Gaza.
Though the West Bank has always faced violent attacks from Israeli occupation, those attacks have increased manifold since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Despite the fact that Hamas does not rule the territory, Israel used the excuse of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to justify its unprecedented attacks on civilians and their infrastructure there.
Between October 7 and December 31, last year more than 340 Palestinians, including a large number of children, were killed in attacks carried out by both the Israeli forces and illegal settlers.
The Israeli attacks targeted Palestinian civilians, including artists from the famous Freedom Theater, while homes were demolished, hospitals and medical facilities targeted, and roads and other civilian infrastructure uprooted.
At least three Palestinian men were shot and killed by the occupying Israeli forces during the intervening period of Monday evening and Tuesday night in Tulkarm. Video footage of these attacks showed Israeli forces first shooting and killing the men and then running over the bodies of one of them with their military vehicle.
A terrifying scene of an Israeli Jeep running over a young man after shooting him along with two other young men in Tulkarm in the West Bank.
Israeli soldiers prevented paramedics from reaching the young men leaving them to bleed until they died. pic.twitter.com/Udm539Ho0D
Israeli forces reportedly conducted similar night raids in Qalqilya, Nablus, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, among several other places on Tuesday night, arresting scores of people and destroying civic infrastructure.
Israeli occupation is targeting the Palestinians in the West Bank economically as well by refusing to transfer millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, leaving it with no money to pay the salaries to its over 140,000 employees. It has also refused to allow around 150,000 workers from the territory to return to their jobs in Israel since October 7.
Deadliest Year since 2005
Israeli forces similarly attacked the Jenin refugee camp a couple of days ago and killed at least 7 Palestinians. They have targeted the camp repeatedly since October 7, killing over 60 Palestinians there and deliberately destroying most of the roads and other civil infrastructure. According to Al-Jazeera, Tulkarm too has been a center of Israeli attacks with at least 60 Palestinians killed since October 7.
In August, the UN had already declared 2023 to be the deadliest year for the West Bank as the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks had crossed 200, more than the previous high of 167 in 2022.
According to the latest data, the total number of Palestinians killed in 2023 has crossed 500 with over 13,000 more injured in the attacks carried out by both illegal settlers as well as Israeli soldiers.
More than 70 of the Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks were children. This is the highest number of the Palestinian children ever killed in the occupied West Bank in a year. Some sources say the death toll among children is even higher.
Settler Violence
According to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, 2023 was also the most violent year for the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in terms of the number of attacks carried out by the illegal settlers. According to it, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in 2023 just in those attacks.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 1,225 cases of settler violence were recorded in 2023.
The figure presented by the Palestinian officials for the same is almost double at 2,410. It also claims that the number of Palestinians killed in settler violence in 2023 was 22.
There are around 500,000 Israeli settlers living illegally inside the occupied West Bank. Most of these illegal settlers participate in attacks on nearby Palestinian villages under security cover provided by the Israeli occupation forces.
The settlers attack the villages, burn Palestinian houses, their farms and other properties, and attack people trying to prevent those attacks with the objective of terrorizing people to leave their villages and farms.
Record number of Palestinians detained
More than 11,000 Palestinians were also arrested or detained by Israel in the last year in the occupied West Bank alone, which is almost three times higher than the total number of Palestinians inside Israeli prisons before the beginning of the year.
Some of them were later released after a brief period of detention. Some others were released as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Still the number of Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails has jumped from around 4,500 before the beginning of the year to over 7,000 at the end of it.
A joint statement issued by Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Addameer, and others stated that 1,085 of those detained by the Israeli occupation forces from the West Bank in 2023 were children.
As per reports, scores of Palestinian prisoners have been killed inside Israeli jails with large number of them reporting torture and abuse by the prisoner authorities.
