Palestinian Group Says Israel Has Arrested More Than 23,000 In West Bank Since Gaza War Began

RAMALLAH, May 15 (Bernama-Anadolu) -- The Israeli army has arrested more than 23,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, along with thousands from Gaza, since the war in the enclave began in October 2023, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Friday, Anadolu Ajansi (AA) reported.

The group said the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is enduring its “bloodiest and harshest period since 1967.”

Israeli authorities have detained nearly 23,000 Palestinians from the West Bank since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza, including women, children, wounded people and former prisoners, according to the society.

The figure excludes thousands of arrests from Gaza, where the group said Israel continues to forcibly disappear hundreds of detainees.

“Detention has formed and continues to form one of the main pillars of the Israeli colonial project, it is used as a systematic tool to target the Palestinian presence and break the social and national structure of the Palestinian people,” the group said.

According to the society, the war on Gaza has brought “unprecedented changes” to the conditions of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, while Israeli prisons have become “organised spaces for torture, starvation, humiliation and systematic denial of medical treatment.”

The prisoners’ movement is experiencing “the bloodiest phase in its history since 1967,” amid growing cases of slow killing, torture, sexual assault, starvation and medical deprivation, it added.

The group said 89 identified Palestinian prisoners have died since the start of the war in Gaza, including some who succumbed to direct torture, starvation or deliberate medical neglect.

The figure raises the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 to 326, the society said, adding that Israel continues to forcibly disappear dozens of detainees from Gaza.

Over the decades, Israel has arrested more than 1 million Palestinians, the group said, describing mass detention as a tool of “colonial control” dating back to before the Nakba in 1948.

Palestinians use the term "Nakba," or "catastrophe," to describe the displacement of 957,000 Palestinians out of 1.4 million who lived in about 1,300 towns and villages in 1948, coinciding with the establishment of Israel on Palestinian land, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Israel continues to hold more than 9,400 Palestinians in its prisons, including 86 women, 3,376 administrative detainees and 1,283 detainees classified by Israeli authorities as “unlawful combatants,” the group said.

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s genocide since October 2023 reached 73,761 by the end of April 2026, including 72,601 in the Gaza Strip and 1,160 in the West Bank, according to a recent report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

-- BERNAMA-ANADOLU