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A view of the clashes that broke out Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths protesting the raid of Israeli forces after Israeli army carried out a raid in Nablus, West Bank on August 27, 2025. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli army stormed the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday morning, injured 25 Palestinians and laying siege to its Old City, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement that its teams treated 25 people who suffered from tear gas inhalation during ongoing clashes in Nablus.
One person was transferred to the hospital, while the rest were treated on the spot, the organization said.
Witnesses said clashes erupted between dozens of Palestinians and Israeli army forces around the Old City of Nablus, where youths pelted the army with stones, which responded by live fire, rubber-coated bullets, and tear gas canisters to disperse protesters.
Witnesses said military reinforcements were deployed in and around the city, with troops forcing several families to evacuate their homes and turning them into military posts.
Israeli forces also began conducting house-to-house searches in multiple neighborhoods across Nablus.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army withdrew from the central West Bank city of Ramallah after an hours-long raid that left 58 Palestinians injured and three others detained, according to medical sources.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in separate statements that its teams treated and transported 58 injured people, including eight wounded by live fire, five by shrapnel, and 14 by rubber-coated bullets. Another 31 Palestinians suffered from tear gas inhalation.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed and 7,000 injured in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and illegal settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal. It demanded the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli armoured vehicle and an ambulance is seen during raid at the Jenin Refugee Camp in the city of Jenin, north of the West Bank on December 12, 2023 [İssam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli occupation army yesterday admitted that its forces used an ambulance to infiltrate Balata refugee camp in Nablus in the northern West Bank, claiming that it is investigating the incident that Palestinians say led to the death of an elderly woman and a young man.
On Sunday, Palestinians shared videos taken by a surveillance camera in a shop showing Israeli occupation soldiers getting out of an ambulance in the heart of the camp and shooting at passersby, which they say led to the death of an elderly woman and a young man, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
In a statement quoted by the paper yesterday, the occupation army claimed that it operates in accordance with international law and that the incident in question is being investigated.
“The investigation would examine the use of the vehicles shown in the video and allegations of harm to uninvolved individuals during the exchange of fire between the terrorists and our forces.”
The video was taken on 19 December 2024 during an Israeli raid on the camp. On the same day, Palestinians reported that two people were killed in the operation, one of them an 80-year-old woman, according to the Israeli newspaper.
At the time, the Israeli army said in a statement that its forces launched an operation to arrest a suspect in Balata camp, and “during the activity, there was an exchange of fire with fighters who fired shots and threw explosive devices at the forces,” the statement added.
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.
