30 Palestinians detained in a day of West Bank raids, including a journalist and a physician

The Palestinian Prisoner Society said 30 Palestinians were detained on Wednesday during Israeli military raids across the occupied West Bank, reaching the governorates of Hebron and Bethlehem in the south, Nablus in the north, and Tulkarem and Qalqilya in the northwest. It said homes were searched, property was damaged and some of those held were questioned inside their houses before being taken away.

Among them was a journalist, seized during an incursion into Al-Saff Street in the centre of Bethlehem, and a physician taken from her home in Ramallah. Local sources reported that the Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs was detained at his house in Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem.

The detentions were spread thinly rather than concentrated in one place. Five men were taken from the town of Azzun and one from Hableh, both near Qalqilya; two brothers from the Beita area and two more from Koroum Ashour near Nablus; two residents of Tulkarem; and others from Qalandia refugee camp and the village of Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem.

The raids brought disruption beyond the arrests. A curfew was imposed on ath-Thaheriya, south of Hebron, where several vehicles were damaged, and tear gas and stun grenades were fired in Madama, south of Nablus, and in Tuqu' east of Bethlehem. A 28-year-old was assaulted in the Ras al-Ein area of Nablus and another man was beaten in occupied Jerusalem.

Settlers were active in the same hours, releasing livestock onto land at Shu'ab al-Batem in Masafer Yatta south of Hebron, blocking roads at al-Maniya east of Bethlehem, and shining laser beams at homes in Beit Furik east of Nablus. No Israeli account of the day's operations was issued.

What gives a single day's tally its weight is the total it feeds. The society puts the number of Palestinians held by Israel at around 9,400, including 94 women, more than 350 children, 3,244 people held in administrative detention without charge or trial, and 1,320 classified as unlawful combatants. It said the arrest of journalists is meant to suppress accounts of what is happening in the territory.

For families, the arithmetic is simpler and slower. Administrative detention orders are renewable, so a household counted in Wednesday's 30 may wait months without a charge to answer or a date to plan around, and the raid that took a doctor out of a clinic or a reporter off a street removes a service the neighbourhood was relying on.