By Abdul Adil
(AA, Al Jazeera, NNA, Wafa, The Muslim News):
GAZA BANK & WEST BANK
The death toll from the Israeli indiscriminate bombings on the Gaza Strip Tuesday surged to 47,107 civilians, according to medical sources.
They said that the total death toll in the Gaza Strip has climbed to 47,107, mostly women and children, and wounded 111,147 others, since the onset of the genocidal aggression on the Strip on October 7, 2023.
They pointed out that just within the last 24 hours, 72 dead bodies, including 68 retrieved from the rubble.
Meanwhile, Israel is now focussing its attacks on the West Bank and it has become especially vicious since announcement especially since President Donald Trump rescinded the sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on Israeli settler groups in the West Bank on Monday, following his inauguration.
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and 40 others wounded in an Israeli army raid on Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, according to Health Ministry.
Defense for Children International Palestine says that a 14-year-old boy named Ahmad Rashid Rushdi Jazar is among those killed by Israeli forces during raids across the occupied West Bank. The group says he was shot from a long distance, and that those trying to help him were also shot at.
“Israeli forces shot and killed Ahmad Rashid Rushdi Jazar, 14, near the Sebastia kindergarten in the northern occupied West Bank on Sunday,” the group said in a social media post.
“Soldiers shot Ahmad from more than 2,000 feet away, then fired toward his friends who tried to help him.”
Witnesses said special Israeli forces raided several areas in the Jenin refugee camp with Israeli drones striking two sites in the area.
The Israeli public broadcaster KAN confirmed that a drone strike targeted infrastructure in the camp.
A military statement said the operation in Jenin, code-named “Iron Wall,” is expected to last several days.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the Jenin operation is part of the army’s “systematic and decisive way against the Iranian axis wherever it sends its arms in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Judea and Samira (the West Bank).”
For its part, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group, the Quds Brigades, confirmed that its fighters had confronted Israeli forces in Jenin, inflicting casualties among soldiers.
Palestinian group Hamas also called on Palestinians to mobilize in the West Bank to confront the Israeli attack in Jenin.
Illegal Israeli settlers have carried out attacks and acts of aggression across the occupied West Bank, while dozens of Palestinians have been arrested in military raids.
A Palestinian sustained head injuries Tuesday when illegal Israeli settlers attacked his vehicle with stones near the entrance to the Shiloh settlement in northern Ramallah, according to the Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
The victim was taken to the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. The assault also caused damage to several other vehicles.
The incident occurred near the Shiloh settlement, which is built on Palestinian-owned land in the occupied West Bank.
That attack was after at least 21 Palestinians sustained injuries as illegal Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian towns near Qalqilya in the northern occupied West Bank.
Violence perpetrated by settlers and Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank has increased since an onslaught against the Gaza Strip began Oct. 7, 2023.
A ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal took effect on Sunday.
In addition, a Palestinian Tuesday night sustained an injury in an attack by Israeli colonists on the Ramallah- Nablus Road, according to security sources.
They said that Israeli settlers hurled stones at vehicles with Palestinian registration plates traveling near Shilo illegal settlement, northeast of Ramallah, injuring a passenger in the head and causing damage to several cars.
The casualty was rushed to a nearby hospital for urgent treatment.
Meanwhile, settlers gathered on the main road near Sinjil town, northeast of Ramallah, and obstructed the movement of Palestinian vehicles.
Settlers violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
Over 700,000 Israeli settlers are living in colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli occupation forces Tuesday evening detained seven Palestinians from the occupied West Bank governorates of Salfit and Hebron, according to local sources.
They said that the occupation troops rounded up five Palestinians, all identified as residents of the Beit Kahel town, west of Hebron, as the latter were touring their land in the Farsh al-Hawa area.
Meanwhile, the gun-toting soldiers rounded up a youth from a store in Deir Istiya town, northwest of Salfit.
Earlier today, eyewitnesses confirmed that the occupation soldiers detained a 17-year-old teen after besieging a house in Tiinnik village, west of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The Israeli army rounded up at least 20 more Palestinians in fresh military raids in the occupied West Bank, according to prisoners’ affairs groups on Tuesday.
Two women were among the detainees in the raids that targeted Hebron, Qalqilya, Nablus, and Ramallah, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement.
Israeli soldiers interrogated dozens of Palestinians in several towns during the raids before releasing them, the statement said.
The new arrests brought the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank since October 2023 to over 14,300, including those who were released after being arrested, according to Palestinian figures.
The occupation forces frequently raid Palestinian houses almost daily across the West Bank on the pretext of searching for “wanted” Palestinians, triggering clashes with residents.
These raids are conducted without a search warrant, whenever and wherever the military chooses in keeping with its sweeping arbitrary powers.
Under Israeli military law army commanders have full executive, legislative, and judicial authority over 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. Palestinians have no say in how this authority is exercised.
According to the latest figures from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently 10,400 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 320 child prisoners and 88 female prisoners.
This number includes approximately 3,376 Palestinians placed under “administrative detention”, which allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed and four others were injured in an “operational activity” in the northern West Bank, the army said on Monday.
A military statement said that one of the injured soldiers was in serious condition.
The army said the casualties occurred during an “operational activity” in the Menashe Brigade zone, without specifying the nature of the activity.
The Menashe Brigade zone refers to the Jenin and Tulkarem area in the northern West Bank.
Israel’s Army Radio, however, said the soldiers were killed and injured in a roadside bomb explosion in the Palestinian town of Tammun.
A ceasefire and prisoner swap agreement took effect in Gaza on Sunday, suspending Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave.
The 3-phase deal includes a prisoner exchange and sustained calm, aiming for a permanent truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The civil defense service said its teams retrieved the bodies of 38,000 people from under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza since the start of the Israeli war on Oct. 7, 2023.
Describing northern Gaza as a “pile of rubble,” the agency appealed to Arab and foreign civil defense teams to help in rescue efforts in the bombed-out region.
Some 634 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip under a ceasefire deal since Sunday, a Palestinian source said on Monday.
“Some 310 aid trucks reached northern Gaza, including fuel, medical supplies, food supplies, vegetables and fruits, while 324 trucks arrived in southern Gaza,” the source with Gaza’s Interior Ministry told Anadolu.
Under the deal, some 600 aid trucks will be allowed into Gaza on a daily basis along with the reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt on day seven of the agreement.
Three Palestinian citizens were Monday injured when an Israeli drone “Quadcopter” dropped a bomb on civilians in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.
WAFA correspondent reported, quoting a medical source, that three injuries arrived at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis as a result of the explosion of a bomb dropped by the “Quadcopter” while civilians were inspecting their homes near the buffer zones in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.
The ceasefire in the Gaza Strip went into effect yesterday at exactly 11:15 am.
Meanwhile, Palestinian women released as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas have revealed severe mistreatment by Israeli authorities during their detention.
The accounts shed light on the struggles faced by detainees in Israeli prisons and the abuse they endured before their release.
Raghad Amro, 23, described the harrowing treatment she and others experienced, saying: “We were dragged by our hair and beaten. Israeli guards did not even allow us to raise our heads.”
She also recounted being held for hours in metal-caged buses before being transferred to Ofer Prison, where detainees were subjected to further humiliation and violence.
Similarly, Yasemin Abu Surur, 27, who had been held under “administrative detention,” said women were completely isolated from the outside world in the days leading up to their release.
“We didn’t even know that today would be our day of freedom,” she expressed.
Both women highlighted the severe conditions in Israeli prisons, including lack of adequate food, physical abuse, and medical neglect.
LEBANON
The Israeli military committed 17 violations of a ceasefire deal in Lebanon on Tuesday.
The breaches were concentrated in Beirut and the districts of Bint Jbeil, Marjeyoun, and Hasbaiyya in the Nabatieh Governorate, involving drone flights, incursions, demolitions and arson.
Israeli drones conducted intensive low-altitude flights in Beirut.
In the Bint Jbeil district, bulldozers cleared roads in Maroun al-Ras and infantry units advanced from Maroun al-Ras toward the Al-Maslakha neighborhood on the outskirts of Bint Jbeil city.
There, they detonated gates, raided homes and fired intermittently from machine guns. Tanks later joined the incursion, shelling a house. Israeli forces also detonated several homes in the village of Yaroun.
In the Marjeyoun district, Israeli troops moved from the town of Bani Hayyan into Wadi Saluki, where they demolished houses and buildings. Another force advanced from Taybeh to Aadchit El Qsair, while operations were carried out in Qaryna and Dabbash west of Meiss al-Jabal.
Israel also set fire to a two-story home in Burj al-Muluk and destroyed vehicles and equipment belonging to the Ward Company, which works on the Litani River water transfer project, also known as Project 800.
The village of Sadana in Hasbaya was targeted by multiple shells fired by Israeli forces.
Fragile ceasefire has been in place since Nov. 27, ending a period of mutual shelling between Israel and the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, that began Oct. 8, 2023, and escalated into a full-scale conflict on Sept. 23.
YEMEN
Julien Harneis, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, told a UN meeting that the use of a key port is down to just 25 percent of capacity due to a series of Israeli strikes on the country’s infrastructure amid fighting with the Houthis.
“[The] impact of air strikes on Hodeidah Harbour, particularly in the last weeks, is very important,” said Harneis, adding that four out of the five tugboats needed to escort large ships into the harbour had been sunk.
In a series of strikes in late December, Israeli planes struck the Hodeidah Port along with the Sanaa airport and several power stations.
