Eight Palestinians were injured on Saturday when illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers assaulted residents in the ar‑Ras al‑Ahmar area south of Tubas, in the northeastern West Bank. The attack is part of a rapidly escalating pattern of colonizer violence targeting herding communities across the eastern slopes of the district.
Medical teams from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Tubas said they treated five Palestinians who suffered severe bruising after colonizers beat them with clubs and rifle butts.
The injured were transferred to hospital for further treatment. Residents reported that the assault occurred as colonizers advanced toward Palestinian herders in the area, attempting to intimidate them and force them away from their grazing land.
Later in the day, colonizers attacked several Palestinians east of Atouf, also in the Tubas district, and attempted to steal their livestock. Local residents said colonizers approached herders, assaulted them, and tried to seize their animals before fleeing toward nearby colonial outposts.
In a related incident, Israeli soldiers detained Mohammad Fayyad Bani Odah along with his daughters, Wa’ed and ‘Ahed, in addition to Dia’ Ali Bani Odah, in ar‑Ras al‑Ahmar shortly after Israeli colonizers invaded the area and injured three young Palestinian men. Palestinian medics rushed the wounded to a hospital in Tubas.
In addition, Israeli colonizers attacked the main water transmission line serving the Khirbet Yarza area east of Tubas on Saturday evening.
Mukhlis Masa’eed, head of the Yarza Village Council, said the colonizers damaged the only pipeline supplying drinking water to the Palestinian families living there, leaving the community without access to its sole water source.
Communities along the eastern belt of Tubas have faced a sharp rise in colonizer attacks, including livestock theft, land seizures, and repeated assaults on shepherds.
Over the past two years, more than four Palestinian communities in the eastern Tubas region have been completely emptied of residents due to sustained colonizer violence carried out under the protection of Israeli occupation forces.
Dozens of additional families have been forced to leave other nearby communities after enduring continuous attacks, harassment, and the destruction of their livelihoods.
These latest assaults come one day after six Palestinian families in the nearby village of Aqqaba dismantled their homes and tents and prepared to leave the area following weeks of escalating colonizer attacks and a violent assault that left twelve Palestinians injured.
The earlier report detailed the growing pattern of coordinated military and colonizer violence that is driving widespread displacement across the Tubas district and the broader occupied West Bank.
The Wall & Colonization Resistance Commission has confirmed that Israeli forces and colonizers carried out a total of 1,872 attacks across the occupied West Bank during the month of January.
The Commission documented 1,404 attacks carried out directly by Israeli forces and 468 by colonizers. The highest number of assaults occurred in Hebron, with 415 incidents, followed by Ramallah and al‑Bireh with 374, Nablus with 328, and occupied Jerusalem with 201.
According to the Commission, these attacks took multiple forms, including physical assaults on residents, uprooting of trees, burning agricultural fields, preventing farmers from accessing their land, seizing property, and demolishing homes and agricultural structures.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
Articles 53 and 147, prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
