Israeli forces detained several Palestinians in an overnight raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, as the Allenby crossing — the sole international gateway for Palestinians to leave the territory without entering Israel – reopened later than scheduled Friday.
When contacted by AFP, an Israeli military spokesman confirmed the raid and said that "forces operated in the Nablus area to apprehend several suspects."
"The suspects were subsequently transferred to the Shin Bet for questioning," the spokesman added, referring to the Israeli domestic intelligence agency.
An official from the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said that "former prisoners, journalists, academics and members of the Legislative Council," were among those targeted.
The detentions "will only fuel public anger," said Abdul Rahman Shadid, a Hamas official in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the October 2023 attack.
Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 983 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including members of security forces, have been killed in attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.
On Tuesday, Palestinian and Jordanian authorities said Israel was indefinitely closing the crossing, which Palestinians feared was retaliation by Israel for France and other Western countries formally recognising a Palestinian state.
Israel announced on Thursday that it would reopen the crossing only for passenger traffic from the next morning.
At around 11:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Friday, Palestinian travellers confirmed the reopening, roughly three hours later than scheduled.
Thousands of people gathered in front of the terminal, an AFP journalist on the scene reported.
In an angry U.N. address to a nearly-empty hall on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to block a Palestinian state, accusing European leaders of pushing his country into "national suicide" and rewarding Hamas.
In a rare show of protest, most state delegations walked out of the U.N. General Assembly as Netanyahu prepared to deliver his address.
The mass walkout was in protest of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Netanyahu used his address to the U.N. General Assembly to reject accusations of genocide and starvation in Gaza.
