Israeli soldiers marched dozens of Palestinian men in single file through the city of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, each with their hands placed on the shoulders of the person in front of them.
Flanked by soldiers and and military vehicles, the men appeared to be detained amid Israeli raids that followed what the Israeli military said was an explosion that injured two Israeli soldiers.
The operation came the same day that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a large Israeli West Bank settlement, and declared in video published by his office: "This place is ours.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu signed an agreement to push ahead with Israel's widely criticized "E1" settlement plan, which would effectively split the territory in two, further fracturing what Palestinians envision as a future state, already divided between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“We said that there will not be a Palestinian state — and indeed there will be no Palestinian state," Netanyahu said at Ma’ale Adumim Israeli settlement, where new housing units would be added under the plan.
The Israeli military had said in a post on Telegram it was carrying out activity in the area of Tulkarem after a military vehicle was hit as a result of the “detonation of an explosive device.” It said soldiers were “encircling the city, conducting roadblocks and inspections in the area.”
The military declined to respond to questions about how many men had been detained or to provide any further information.
According to Israeli rights organization B'Tselem, by the end of December 2024, the Israeli Prison Service was holding more than 9,600 Palestinians in detention or in prison on what it defined “security” grounds, including 2,216 from the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli operation comes days after Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, warned that its teams were seeing a “risk of ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank, with Palestinians facing “forced mass displacement” in the territory “by Israeli forces and settlers” amid a rise of violence against Palestinians in the area.
It further condemned the E1 settlement plan, calling it “one of the clearest recent attempts by the Israeli authorities to kill any prospect of a Palestinian future.” The plan has been widely criticized, including by Israeli rights groups, as being aimed at preventing a two-state solution and as risking fueling more conflict in the region.
In recent weeks, a number of countries have vowed to recognize Palestinian statehood, including France, Canada, Australia and Belgium. The United Kingdom has said it too would recognize Palestinian statehood this month unless Israel meets certain conditions.
Israel has in the past agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, including under Netanyahu’s leadership. More recently, and particularly under the current government, that idea has been rejected.
