Israeli occupation forces carried out a new wave of abductions across the occupied West Bank from Wednesday evening through Thursday morning, detaining 40 Palestinians, among them four women and a young girl, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS).
In a statement on Thursday, the PPS said the pace and scale of abductions since the start of the current war have reached levels not seen in decades. The organization estimates that nearly 22,000 Palestinians from the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, have been detained over the past two and a half years.
This figure includes those who remain imprisoned and those who were later released. The PPS noted that the number does not include the thousands detained from the Gaza Strip or those detained inside Israel in 1948‑occupied areas.
|Israeli Forces Abduct Dozens Across the Occupied West Bank|
The organization described the abductions campaigns as “sweeping and violent,” saying they are routinely accompanied by “severe beatings, intimidation, and organized acts of terror against detainees and their families.”
Homes are often left ransacked, with soldiers destroying furniture, damaging infrastructure, and confiscating vehicles, cash, and gold jewelry.
The PPS also documented cases in which Israeli forces demolished homes belonging to families of prisoners, used relatives as hostages, and forced detainees to act as human shields during military operations.
According to the statement, field interrogations have become a defining feature of these abduction campaigns. Thousands of Palestinians have been subjected to on‑the‑spot questioning since the start of the war, often under harsh conditions.
The PPS said the abuses documented during these field interrogations “do not differ in severity” from those reported inside formal interrogation centers, where detainees have long described torture, prolonged isolation, and denial of basic rights.
The organization stressed that the policy of daily abductions has historically been one of the central tools used by Israeli authorities to suppress Palestinian political and social life.
It said the practice targets all segments of society—students, workers, activists, former prisoners, and community leaders—and continues to escalate despite the declared ceasefire, which has not halted the broader military campaign or the ongoing violence across Palestinian towns and refugee camps.
Human rights groups have repeatedly warned that the scale of abductions, combined with the lack of transparency about detainees’ whereabouts and conditions, raises serious concerns under international law. Many families say they have gone weeks or months without receiving any information about their detained relatives.
The PPS renewed its call for international monitoring, access to detention centers, and accountability for violations committed during the ongoing invasions, warning that the current trajectory threatens to entrench a system of mass detention with long‑term consequences for Palestinian society.
