The occupied Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank witnessed an intense escalation on the ground, highlighted by the continuation of raids and military violations, in parallel with a campaign of arrests and widespread closures that affected towns and vital agricultural areas.

The recent developments reflected an insistence on the ground to tighten the economic and geographical noose on the population, which increases the pace of daily tension on all fronts.

Ongoing shelling in Gaza raises death toll

Palestinian medical sources announced that the young man, Walid Magdi Haniyeh, was killed on Friday morning as a result of serious injuries sustained as a result of previous Israeli shelling that targeted the vicinity of the Italian compound in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, west of Gaza City.

The sources confirmed that two dead and 15 injured arrived at hospitals in the Gaza Strip during the last hours, noting that a number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads because ambulance and civil defense crews could not reach them.

In the same context, the Palestinian news agency "Wafa" reported that a young man was wounded by Israeli forces in the vicinity of the Austrian cemeteries west of Khan Younis, coinciding with the monitoring of violations on the ground, represented in the blowing up of houses and artillery shelling that affected the outskirts of towns and tents, raising the cumulative toll since the start of the escalation in October 2023 to 73,043 dead and 173,417 injured.

Arrests and night raids in the West Bank

Palestinian security and local sources announced to Wafa News Agency that the Israeli forces carried out a large-scale raid campaign at dawn that resulted in the arrest of dozens of people from the city of Qalqilya after raiding and searching their homes in the neighborhoods of Sufin and Al-Dhahr.

The campaign coincided with the storming of the village of Kafr Qalil, south of Nablus, and the town of Beit Kahel in the north, where the military vehicles destroyed the contents of the houses without reporting additional arrests there.

Meanwhile, security sources in Hebron governorate revealed the arrest of the citizen Muhammad Imad al-Nawaja'a after storming the town of Yatta in the south and searching and tampering with citizens' homes, amid the intensive deployment of military patrols in the residential alleys.

Settlers attack "Minya" and the occupation closes the "Arraba Plain"

The correspondent of the "Al-Jazeera" network reported that the Israeli bulldozers closed all the entrances and agricultural roads leading to the "Arraba Plain" south of the city of Jenin with earthen berms and obstacles, which isolated agricultural areas exceeding 28 thousand dunams.

Farmers and local residents in the area said the closure is forcing them to take alternate and long bypass roads for several kilometres, which has caused a decline in commercial activity and affected the agricultural production system for families who rely on grain farming and livestock.

On a parallel front, security sources confirmed that a group of settlers attacked the homes of citizens in the village of Minya, southeast of Bethlehem, where they threw stones at houses and deliberately destroyed the main electricity line that feeds the village, which led to a power outage and provoked a state of panic among the residents following the recent escalation of vehicular attempts and repeated attacks.

This escalation on the ground in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank comes as part of a series of ongoing violations of the ceasefire and truce agreement signed on October 11, due to which the Gaza Strip alone has recorded 1,031 deaths since that date.

These developments coincide with the intensification of military measures in the West Bank through the erection of flyover checkpoints and the closure of vital plains, at a time when the Palestinian agricultural sector is facing unprecedented challenges related to the difficulty of accessing land and the high cost of production due to security obstacles.