19 Homes Demolished, 216 Palestinians Arrested and Gaza Suffers from Restricted Aid Entry
February 18, 2025
The Israeli occupation forces have intensified their expansionist plans in the West Bank through a clear increase in decisions to confiscate Palestinian lands, along with an increase in settlement activities in the West Bank.
Accordingly, the OIC Media Observatory on Israeli Crimes against Palestinians documented, during the period from 11-17 February 2025, five decisions to confiscate an area of 17,868 dunums of Palestinian land. This land includes areas in Al-Hadidiya, Al-Mufayya, Al-Buqay’a, Umm Ashish, and Al-Far’a village in Tubas, and the villages of Kafr Malik and Deir Jarir in Ramallah, and the town of Deir Ballut and the village of Al-Luban Al-Gharbi in Salfit, and to allocate them as pastoral areas for settlers.
The number of settlement activities during this period reached 10. These activities involved settlers and occupation forces bulldozing Palestinian agricultural lands to expand and pave roads in the village of Rojib, the Za’tara Junction checkpoint in Nablus, and the village of Yasuf in Salfit. Additionally, they paved a 3-kilometer-long settlement road and placed a barbed wire fence around several thousand meters of other land that was cultivated in an attempt to seize it in the villages of Tubas. The occupation forces began building a new settlement in Bethlehem and the village of Shuqba, while the Israeli extremist Itamar Ben Gvir and a group of settlers attacked Palestinian lands in the villages of Bethlehem, during which they planted olive trees in preparation for seizing those lands. The settlers repeated the same activity in the town of Yatta in Hebron on two different occasions over the past seven days.
In the same context, the settlers launched 36 attacks on towns and villages in the West Bank, during which they set fire to agricultural lands and tents in the village of Burin, the town of Yatta, and in Jericho. They also stole 50 sheep in the town of Aqraba in Nablus and killed 25 others by poisoning the lands in Bani Naim in Hebron.
Over the past period, the settlers carried out various attacks, including beatings, vandalism, smashing and burning vehicle windows, and closing roads. These crimes come at a time when Israel, the occupying power, murdered 19 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between February 11 and 17, 2025, where rescue teams recovered the bodies of 64 Palestinians from under the rubble, as a result of the Israeli aggression that partially stopped on January 18, 2025. The occupation forces also wounded 97 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and arrested 216 others in the cities and villages of the West Bank.
According to the OIC observatory on Israeli crimes, the total number of Palestinians murdered from October 7, 2023, to February 17, 2025, has reached 49,270, and the number of injured reached 118,490.
The Israeli occupation forces also demolished 16 homes in various villages and cities across the West Bank and Al-Quds. In addition, they bombed and burned three vehicles and a poultry farm in Jenin, bulldozed a street and parts of the infrastructure in the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, and bulldozed an area of land in the village of Safa in Ramallah. It also bulldozed an agricultural land of about 400 square meters after destroying the surrounding retaining wall in the village of Al-Funduq in Qalqilya. Other acts of destructions carried out by the Israeli occupation included the demolition of three caves, a water collection well, electricity and water networks, and two agricultural rooms. The occupation forces bulldozed trees and crops surrounding the houses, uprooted 10 trees around the rooms, destroyed agricultural crops, smashed solar panels, uprooted crops and fruit trees, and destroyed nurseries over an area of 1000 meters. It also destroyed 200 kilograms of dried yogurt in various areas around the town of Yatta.
In terms of attacks on mosques, the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque was subjected to daily raids, and the occupation forces closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City of Hebron, after expelling the director of the mosque from inside it and prevented Palestinians from entering. In the context of their crimes, which amounted to 1371 crimes in one week, the Israeli occupation forces raided the health clinic of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Al-Arroub camp, broke its doors and contents, and turned it into a field investigation center. They also stormed the Al-Tur neighborhood school in occupied Al-Quds, confiscated its books, and imposed the Israeli curriculum on it.
Regarding the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, only 30% of the aid convoys stipulated in the ceasefire agreement have entered so far, while hospitals are facing a deficit due to a lack of oxygen, while medical sources in the Gaza Strip confirmed that 40% of kidney dialysis patients have died as a result of the shortage of medical supplies.