Israel provides conflicting figures for Palestinians arrested in West Bank

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) - The Israeli army on Friday announced that it had arrested 2,600 Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, with an additional five detained in various parts of the larger of the two Palestinian territories on Thursday night.

However, the latest Israeli army figures are disputed by two Palestinian rights organizations, which recorded 5,630 arrests since Oct. 7 as of Thursday.

The Israeli army said in a statement posted on X, “Since the beginning of the war, approximately 2,600 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division.”

The Israeli army claimed that approximately 1,300 of the wanted persons are associated with Hamas.

However, in a joint statement issued on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner's Society announced that the number of Palestinians detained in the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7 had risen to 5,630.

Tensions have been high across the West Bank since fighting broke out in Gaza on Oct. 7 between Palestinian groups and Israel.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7.

At least 22,600 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,910 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave's infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi in Ankara