Israel carries out raids and demolitions, arrests dozens across West Bank 

The Israeli military has launched raids and interrogations ensnaring more than 80 people across the occupied West Bank, wounding at least one man and demolishing the home of another as Israel escalates its attacks on the Palestinian territory in tandem with its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.

In one incident on Thursday, Israeli forces surrounded a home in Dura, south of the city of Hebron, before shooting and wounding the brother of Mahmoud al-Fasfous.

The al-Fasfous brothers have long been wanted by Israeli forces and have faced frequent raids of the family home and soldier assaults.

In another raid in Hebron’s Khallat Nafisa area, Israeli forces sealed off the area from civilians before destroying the home of Imran al-Atrash with a bulldozer, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israeli forces killed al-Atrash and another Palestinian, Walid Muhammad Khalil Sabarna, in mid-November when the duo was accused of carrying out a car-ramming and stabbing attack that killed one Israeli settler and injured three.

The Israeli military posted photos of the demolition on Telegram, claiming that al-Atrash was a “terrorist” and cheering the effort to destroy his home.

Elsewhere in Hebron and the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces detained and interrogated at least 80 Palestinians during overnight and dawn raids, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society reported.

At least one woman and two children were among those detained along with former prisoners.

“This represents an unprecedented escalation since the beginning of the year, described as part of a campaign of collective punishment,” the group said, adding that field interrogations have “become the occupation’s most prominent policy”.

Two arrests took place during a raid on the Arroub refugee camp, located north of Hebron, with other arrests under way in virtually all areas surrounding the city, Wafa reported.

In the al-Majaz community of Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the South Hebron Hills, Israeli forces plundered homes before converting one into a military outpost, forcing its inhabitants to spend the night outside in the cold.

Meanwhile, in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, soldiers stormed the town of Kobar and fanned out across multiple neighbourhoods.

Townspeople told Al Jazeera that the soldiers tried to provoke residents by shouting: “Who wants to become a martyr? Where are the cowards?”

Israel has stepped up its raids on the occupied West Bank – including injuring dozens of Palestinians with live rounds and grenades at a prominent university earlier this month – amid a formal push to annex the territory.

Israeli settlers have rampaged in Palestinian lands, killing and beating Palestinian civilians, including the elderly, and destroying their property with impunity, often backed by the Israeli military.

Throughout 2025, Israeli settlers or soldiers killed 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last week. Israeli forces killed 225 people while settlers killed at least nine. The agency could not confirm whether settlers or soldiers caused the remaining six deaths.

Fifty-five of those killed – nearly one-quarter of the total – were children.

During the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israelis in the West Bank, including one child and six members of Israeli forces, OCHA reported.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, populated by about 700,000 Israelis, are illegal under international law. The UN has repeatedly called for Israel to dismantle the settlements and said the system resembles apartheid.