On Oct. 9, 2023, a series of short statements about Israeli operations in the West Bank were posted alongside updates on airstrikes in Gaza, on a little-known page on the Israeli army spokesperson’s website called the “War Diary.” The spokesperson’s office makes the War Diary available in English, Arabic, Spanish, French and Hebrew. But information about operations in the West Bank appeared only in Hebrew.
On this first day of West Bank updates, the Israeli military claimed that 41 individuals had been detained over the previous two days throughout the occupied territories, with alleged intelligence specifically linking 29 of these individuals to Hamas. And while the English, Arabic, Spanish and French versions of this page continued to update readers on operations in Gaza, the Hebrew page continued to include both Gaza updates and detailed statements about the West Bank: In Qabalan, Halhul, al-Eizariya and Surif, four towns throughout the occupied territories, the Israeli forces detained four specific individuals after the government claimed intelligence linked two of them to Hamas.
Over the next five days, this pattern continued, with the military posting detailed information about approximately 230 detentions, including two senior Hamas officials who were captured along with four cellphones, two pistols and a machine gun. The military also claimed in Hebrew that “10 attacks were foiled.”
And while Palestinian media outlets began reporting on mass detentions in the West Bank a few weeks later, drawing on reports from witnesses, detention operations and data from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Israeli military was offering the public an unprecedented window on their own understanding of these operations in the occupied territories, according to an analysis of over 800 statements about the West Bank posted to the Hebrew page and scraped in real time.
An analysis of these statements and English translations also shows that while some domestic Israeli reporting mentioned details about these West Bank operations to Israeli readers, foreign reporters, human rights organizations and the larger international community remained unaware that the Israeli military was repeatedly posting about mass detentions, targeted killings, destruction of homes, airstrikes and attacks taking place miles from the conflict in Gaza. The only English-language references to be found to these statements on the internet appeared in occasional items published by The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli army spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on these statements and their Hebrew-language release. The posts appeared as far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition continued to push for an expanded Israeli presence in the West Bank.
Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance in Netanyahu’s government and leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, announced in November 2024 that he was drafting plans for annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories. Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, later called for Netanyahu to “strengthen our grip and sovereignty over the homeland in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical terms for the West Bank. Netanyahu’s office did not comment on Smotrich’s announced annexation plans at the time.
But in October 2023, as the Israeli military began its mass detentions, many in the international community hesitated to call attention to these operations in the absence of data. A researcher at a major human rights organization based in East Jerusalem explained that because their organization was unaware of the obscure Hebrew-language page of the War Diary on which these statements were published, it took weeks for them to gather enough anecdotal evidence of these detentions to feel comfortable commenting on them publicly. The researcher asked to have their name withheld, citing fears that Israeli authorities might respond to their comments by canceling their visa or cutting off their organization’s access to the region.
“We have to rely on on-the-ground reporting, asking people if they knew people that had been picked up,” the researcher said. “If we had this data, if we knew what [the Israeli authorities] were admitting to in their press statements, we might have been able to sound the alarm much sooner.”
By the last week of October, as the international community focused on the civilian casualties caused by Israel’s unprecedented bombardment in Gaza, statements on the Hebrew War Diary page continued to offer a granular view of what was happening in the West Bank.
On Oct. 19, Israeli forces destroyed “the house of a terrorist” in Qibya and seized “many wanted persons” from a refugee camp in Nur Shams. Three days later, forces destroyed a printing press in Hebron, detained the mayor of al-Bireh and conducted airstrikes on a mosque in Jenin because of intelligence indicating that Hamas operatives were stationed below the mosque. On Oct. 30, they announced that around 1,070 people had been detained in the West Bank since Oct. 7, with intelligence linking around 700 people to Hamas.
The Israeli military continued posting statements. In early November 2023, a Hebrew post described airstrikes on a refugee camp in Jenin that allegedly allowed Israeli forces to arrest a specific, high-level Hamas official. Israeli forces also claimed to have destroyed three more printing presses over the following week.
In another November operation, Israeli forces claimed to have found weapons near Birzeit University, “which are used by the terrorist organization’s student cells.” The army then said they destroyed yet another printing press and destroyed three more homes.
Overall, the military said they had detained 1,350 people in the West Bank in that first month of conflict. The army had not previously released these figures, but Israeli prison data shows that, in the month before Oct. 7, 1,300 people were held in administrative detention in prisons across the country. In other words, the number of such detainees from the West Bank alone doubled after Oct. 7.
Under administrative detention, a detainee can be held for an unlimited period without charge or evidence, based on the security services’ suspicion that they might commit a violent political act in the future. It can be used against both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who are suspected of planning an act of political violence, but the vast majority of detainees are Palestinians.
Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, explained that these mass detentions are possible because “military law is applied to the West Bank, and it allows for holding individuals for up to 14 days without legal counsel. It very much limits their ability to reach out to families and counsel, if they have an advocate.”
By mid-November, while the military was announcing operational details of these detention operations on this one Hebrew-language web page, human rights groups began sharing anecdotal reports of specific acts of violence, sexual abuse and deaths in Israeli detention facilities. An anonymous Israeli whistleblower uploaded to social media a video of a half-naked, handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian prisoner being kicked in the head in an Israeli detention facility. Amnesty International reported that an unnamed Palestinian man from East Jerusalem had been beaten in detention and that Israeli prison guards broke three of his ribs.
“The conditions in the military prison facilities have declined dramatically since Oct. 7,” Steiner said. “We’ve seen overcrowding deriving from mass detentions in the West Bank.”
On Nov. 15, during a hearing at Ofer Military Court in the West Bank, a prisoner reported that his interrogators broke his nose during a beating in detention. According to human rights groups, the prisoner “participated in the hearing through videoconferencing, and during the proceedings, sounds of beating could be heard in the background, suggesting that he had been beaten by the guards present at his hearing while the camera was off.” The court decided to end the hearing early.
The Israeli human rights group HaMoked has spent years documenting the number of individuals in various forms of detention in Israeli prisons. From September 2023 to July 2024, their data about detentions of individuals from both Gaza and the West Bank showed an approximately 200% increase in the number of Palestinians detained.
“In normal years, you’d find between 3,000 and 5,000 detainees,” Steiner said. “But the prison service has had around 10,000 detainees since Oct. 7.” The Israeli human rights organization B’tselem reports that, as of December 2024, the Israel Prison Service was holding 9,619 Palestinian detainees for what it described as “security” reasons.
The anonymous human rights researcher explained that, by the end of December 2023, enough first-person testimony had been made public that human rights groups were comfortable speaking out about the same mass detentions that the Israeli military had already been posting about in detail for more than three months on this obscure Hebrew-language page.
“October, November, December — those were the really concerning days,” they said. “There was a lot of silencing people, lots of fear and intimidation.” The source said they knew three other researchers who had seen their visas revoked. In December 2023, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that he had revoked the visa of Lynn Hastings, then the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories, claiming she had failed to condemn Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
But even as late as July 2024, the Israeli military continued to post statements to the Hebrew-language web page containing specific data on worrying trends that human rights groups could only speak to in specific instances. (Other patterns criticized by human rights groups, such as the Israeli military’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and the targeting of journalists, were not detailed in these statements.)
The database of West Bank-specific statements scraped from Oct. 9, 2023, to July 31, 2024, shows that at least 381 mass-detention operations resulted in the arrests of over 4,000 people in over 200 villages and cities throughout the West Bank. At least 66 of these operations were met with what the Israeli military classified as violent resistance, and at least 86 individuals were killed as a result.
The database also shows how the Israeli military has focused on other targets. It destroyed or sealed 10 printing presses, destroyed seven specific individuals’ homes and “mapped” another nine specific homes for future demolition between October 2023 and July 2024. By comparison, B’Tselem documented four partial home demolitions in 2022 and one completed demolition in 2021. The military targeted at least two mosques, claiming that “terrorists” were operating underneath or inside.
A few specific cities have borne the brunt of the conflict. In Nablus, Israeli forces claim that they have repeatedly been met with violent resistance, leading them to make at least 34 arrests. The military claims to have carried out at least 13 airstrike campaigns in Jenin or in a refugee camp near Jenin.
In August 2024, Israeli military operations in the north of the West Bank increased dramatically. At the same time, the army posted updates to its Hebrew-language web page with declining frequency. By early 2025, as increased military operations and airstrikes displaced over 40,000 West Bank residents and as tanks entered Jenin for the first time since 2002, during the Second Intifada, the Israeli military stopped posting detailed statements about their West Bank operations to the Hebrew-language page.
Israel Katz, the new defense minister, set off a media storm in November 2024 when he ordered Ronen Bar, the head of the General Security Services (known by its Hebrew acronym, Shin Bet) to stop using administrative detention against extremist Jewish settlers who had been arrested on suspicion of planning or committing attacks against Palestinians. The incident highlighted the tension between Netanyahu’s far-right government and the heads of Israel’s security services, with Katz issuing his order just two months after Bar warned the government that Jewish “terrorism” was “out of control” in the West Bank and that it was a threat to national security.
Israel has spent years using administrative detention to detain Palestinians across the occupied territories. The security services have also used the same measure against violent extremist settlers, although the number of Jewish detainees was very low compared to the number of Palestinians. Now, since Katz banned its use against Israeli Jews, those settlers have been released from jail.
Meanwhile, according to the data published by the Israeli Prison Services on its website, over 11,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank remain in Israeli prisons. According to the Israeli army’s own statements, posted on a little-known Hebrew-language copy of a press web page, at least 4,400 of these Palestinians were taken from specific villages and cities throughout the West Bank over the 10 months between October 2023 and July 2024. While it makes detailed information about its military operations and detentions available to the public, the Israeli army does not offer any clear basis or justification for keeping so many people in prison. According to a statement posted to the War Diary site on July 25, 2024, just 1,850 of the 4,400 arrested in the West Bank last year have been accused of affiliation with Hamas. The army has not provided a justification for detaining the other 2,500 people.
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