Bank

Ahmed Abed (a pseudonym due to ongoing threats of arrest) still feels like a prisoner despite being released from an Israeli jail to the occupied West Bank nearly two years ago.

Despite being technically “free”, Abed, 43, is still often rearrested by Israeli forces or summoned by intelligence for interrogation.

Hundreds of other Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face similar ordeals after being released from Israeli prisons. Their homes are sometimes raided twice a week; they can be detained, assaulted and interrogated on the spot before being released.

Every day, organisations dedicated to prisoners’ affairs document the arrests of dozens of Palestinians across the West Bank as part of large-scale operations that frequently target former detainees. Most of those detained are released after hours of interrogation, in what appears to be a campaign of intimidation by Israel against former Palestinian prisoners.

Frequent detentions

Abed was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel in January 2025, having served 22 years of a life sentence. Since his release, he has faced persistent harassment by the Israeli military.

Just days after Abed’s release, he was summoned by Israeli intelligence for questioning. They informed him that they were unhappy with the political decision to carry out the exchange deal and warned they would rearrest him if he made the “slightest mistake”.

Since his release, he has been arrested six times and summoned for interrogation five times. Each time, his home has been raided and his family terrorised by Israeli soldiers. His father was once arrested simply because Abed happened to be outside his house at night.

“Whenever there are reports of Israeli military activity in the city, my family goes into a state of high alert; no one sleeps all night,” he told Al Jazeera. “Some neighbours even leave their homes, fearing they might be raided as part of the collective intimidation campaign imposed because of me.”

When Abed is arrested, he is often forced to walk for several kilometres handcuffed and blindfolded, accompanied by soldiers. He is then placed in a detention centre under dire conditions, deprived of food and water, subjected to beatings and verbal abuse, and then the threats begin.

“Every time, they threaten to send me back to prison to the point where I feel as though two-thirds of my body are still in captivity, with only one-third outside,” he said. “The threats vary, but the underlying message is always the same: I am not permitted to do anything ordinary or live a normal life like everyone else.”

Abed avoids family gatherings, fearing his presence may bring them harm, and so limits his interactions to his immediate family. An Israeli officer warned him that if he were to go to the mosque to pray, he would be arrested.

“The Israeli officer told me, ‘We have zero patience for you. Any behaviour we deem inappropriate, or any movement we find suspicious, we will rearrest you immediately,’” Abed added.

Although he managed to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate during his time in prison, he has been unable to secure a job. When employers learn about his repeated arrests, they refuse to hire him. Instead, he has to rely on day-labour work to cover his basic costs.

Loss of livelihood

A former prisoner from Qalqilya says he is arrested on average twice a week during the frequent Israeli military sweeps of the city, where former detainees are targeted. He was recently warned during one interrogation that if he ever set foot on a football pitch, he would be arrested. This puts his job as a referee in jeopardy.

Abdullah, another former prisoner from the city who also requested not to use his real name, told Al Jazeera that he has been arrested so many times since his release in 2000 that he has lost count. But he says he has spent a total of 17 years in custody since his “release”.

He was recently held under “administrative detention”, lasting from November 2023 to February 2025, during which he was subject to physical and psychological torture. By the time he was released, he had lost 60kg (132 pounds).

Abdullah, who supports a family of seven, is repeatedly arrested and released after a few hours, but only after his children have been terrorised and his home ransacked.

His employer grew frustrated with his repeated detentions and found a replacement for him.

“After losing my job, I began working on a piece of land I inherited from my father. However, due to arrests and threats, I can never find the right time to tend to it,” he said. “I often fall behind in irrigating, applying pesticides, or tilling the soil, all of which have taken a toll on my seasonal yields, leaving me with more losses than profits.”

‘Normalising fear’

Since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a wave of Israeli arrest campaigns and pogroms. Israeli troops now make regular incursions into towns, refugee camps, and homes, as well as arrests at military checkpoints to detain former prisoners.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisations have documented approximately 26,000 arrests in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, and early October 2026. This figure includes more than 800 women and nearly 2,000 minors. The total encompasses individuals who were subsequently released, not just those who remain in custody.

Amani Sarahneh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, told Al Jazeera that Israeli operations in the West Bank have evolved into a continuous, round-the-clock wave of detentions. On average, between 10 and 15 Palestinians are arrested and remain in Israeli custody every day.

These arrests not only take place at night, as they did before, but also during daylight hours, at military checkpoints, and through field interrogations.

“The persistence of these campaigns has led to a ‘normalisation of fear’ among the citizens, which has significantly impacted social relations, particularly in villages where residents live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing that occupation forces might storm their towns or public spaces and arrest groups of people at any moment,” she told Al Jazeera.

These arrests are frequently accompanied by physical assaults and abuse, with detainees held for long hours while handcuffed and blindfolded. The victims’ family homes are frequently ransacked and possessions taken away during the Israeli raids.

“These policies also include using family members of those targeted, such as wives and sisters, as hostages to exert pressure,” Sarahneh said.

“The impact of these campaigns has extended beyond the detainees and their families, deepening a sense of fear and apprehension among the general public, who now worry that the arrests could reach a much wider segment of the population,” Sarahneh said.

Paraguay’s former president, Santiago Peña, was brought before prosecutors Saturday after Congress removed him from office amid a banking crisis that has blocked millions of customers from accessing their money, the Associated Press reported.

For investors, Ueno Bank’s collapse raises questions

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Paraguayan President Santiago Pena resigned on Thursday after calls for his removal swelled following the collapse of digital lender ueno that left millions of customers unable ‌to access their accounts.

“I do so with the stability of our country, social peace and the need to preserve our democratic institutions in mind,” he said in a video recorded address on Thursday.

Pena, an ally of US President Donald Trump, is stepping down after the ⁠opposition called an extraordinary session to begin the process of filing an impeachment motion in Congress, and as protesters demanded his resignation.

Earlier on Thursday Pena lost backing from members of his own conservative party. Vice President Pedro Alliana is set to take office as his replacement.

Lawmakers had accused Pena of conflicts of interest, misuse of pension funds and institutional cover-ups linked to the collapse of ueno, which had grown ‌quickly ⁠from a niche fintech player into a mid-tier bank administering close to $850 million in public funds.

“He is accused of negligence at the very least and complicity in covering up the fact that the bank was insolvent,” said Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman.

“The congress right now is tying to impeach the president and the vice president, this session is underway,” she added. “As a I speak, there are people outside urging congress not to accept the resignation of the president because they say that they want him tried and impeached.”

Paraguay’s central bank intervened in ueno after determining ⁠that it had breached minimum solvency requirements, setting off a crisis that has left the company’s roughly 3 million customers, in a ⁠country of 6.5 million people, unable to access accounts.

“My greatest wish is that the return of those funds be guaranteed, that the deposit guarantee fund fulfill its purpose, and that ⁠public funds – as well as the resources that belong to all Paraguayans – be protected,” Pena added in his address.

Ueno has made no public statement on the issue.

In July, 2004, the IMF and
World Bank commemorated the 60th anniversary of their founding at Bretton Woods, NH to
provide a financial framework of assistance for the postwar world after the
expected defeat of Germany
and Japan.
With breathtaking hypocrisy, an October, 2004 Development Committee Communique
stated: “As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bretton Woods
Institutions….we recommit ourselves to supporting efforts by developing
countries to pursue sustainable growth, sound macroeconomic policies, debt
sustainability, open trade, job creation, poverty reduction and good
governance.” Phew.

In fact, for 63 hellish years,
both these institutions achieved mirror opposite results on everything the
above comment states. From inception, their mission was to integrate developing
nations into the Global North-dominated world economy and use debt repayment as
the way to transfer wealth from poor countries to powerful bankers in rich
ones.

The scheme is called debt
slavery because new loans are needed to service old ones, indebtedness rises,
and borrowing terms stipulate harsh one-way “structural adjustment”
provisions that include:

• privatizations of state
  enterprises;
• government deregulation;
• deep cuts in social
  spending;
• wage freezes or cuts;
• unrestricted free market
  access for foreign corporations;
• corporate-friendly tax
  cuts;
• crackdowns on trade
  unionists; and
• savage repression for
  non-believers under a system incompatible with social democracy.

Everywhere the scheme is the
same: huge public wealth transfers to elitist private hands, exploding public
debt, an ever-widening disparity between the super-rich and desperate poor, and
an aggressive nationalism to justify huge spending on security for aggressive
surveillance, mass incarceration plus repression and torture for social
control.

An Alternative to Debt Slavery – The Bank of the South

Last December, Hugo Chavez
announced his idea for a Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, as part of his
crusade against the institutions of international capital he calls “tools
of Washington.”
The bank will be officially launched at a presidential November 3 summit in Caracas, where it is to be headquartered, with seven
founding member-states – Venezuela,
Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay,
Paraguay, Bolivia and Ecuador.

On October 12, Colombia’s
President Alvaro Uribe announced his nation agreed to become the eighth member
but said “The decision is not a rejection to the World Bank or
Inter-American Development Bank, but a sign of solidarity and fraternity
towards the South American community.” At this time, only four South
American states aren’t included – Chile,
Peru, Guyana and Surinam,
but Chile seems likely to
come aboard following Colombia’s
lead, and the others may decide to join them.

Finance ministers from the
founding countries met in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
October 8 to finalize the Bank’s Founding Document. Many key operating issues
have yet to be resolved, but unofficial information was that each nation will
commit 10% of its international reserves and have equal oversight over the new
institution. In a concluding news conference, Brazilian finance minister Guido
Mantega stated: the participating countries “have been able to overcome
all obstacles that were in the way of an understanding around the formation of
the Bank of the South. We can now say that the (bank) is close to becoming a
reality” even though Brazil
(Latin America’s largest economy) hasn’t yet
formalized its entry.

Venezuelan finance minister
Rodrigo Cabezas explained the bank will help develop the region by offering
South Americans more credits. It’s being “created to build a new
architecture that assumes an improved relationship of the bank and its capacity
to offer credits for its people.” It also aims to increase liquidity and
revive socioeconomic development and infrastructure investments in
participating countries and keep them outside the restrictive control of the
IMF and World Bank that are fast losing influence and being phased out of the
region.

In 2005, 80% of IMF’s $81
billion loan portfolio was to Latin America.
Today, it’s 1% with nearly all its $17 billion in outstanding loans to Turkey and Pakistan. The World Bank is also
being rejected. Venezuela
had already paid off its IMF and World Bank debt ahead of schedule when Hugo
Chavez symbolically announced on April 30: “We will no longer have to go
to Washington
nor to the IMF nor to the World Bank, not to anyone.” Ecuador’s Rafael
Correa is following suit. He cleared his country’s IMF debt, suspended World
Bank loans, accused the WB of trying to extort money from him when he was
economy and finance minister in 2005, and last April declared the Bank’s
country representative persona non grata in an extraordinary diplomatic slap in
the face.

The Banco del Sur will replace
these repressive institutions with $7 billion in startup capital when it begins
operating in 2008. It will be under “a new financial architecture”
for regional investment with the finance ministers of each member nation
sitting on the bank’s administrative council with equal authority over its
operations as things now stand. Venezuelan Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas
stressed the bank’s Latin roots, saying: “The idea is to rely on a
development agency for us, led by us” to finance public and private
development and regional integration projects. He added: “There will not
be credit subjected to economic policies. There will not be credit that
produces a calamity for our people and as a result, it will not be a tool of
domination” like the international lending agencies.

Hugo Chavez’s vision is to
liberate the region’s countries from IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American
Development Bank (IBD) control that condemn millions to poverty through their
lending practices. Helped by windfall oil profits, his government is already doing
it with an unprecedented commitment to provide financial aid and below-market
priced oil to regional and other countries. So far this year, it’s on the order
of around $9 billion, and, unlike the Washington-controlled kind, it comes at
low cost and with good will, a cooperative spirit and few if any strings.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph
Stiglitz recognizes Chavez’s efforts and stated his support for the Banco del
Sur on an October 10 visit to Caracas.
He said “One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it
would reflect the perspectives of those in the South (while in contrast IMF and
World Bank conditions) hinder (regional) development effectiveness.”

Stiglitz met with Hugo Chavez
on his visit and praised his redistributive social policies. He also criticized
Washington Consensus neoliberal practices that exploit the region’s people,
“undermin(e)….Andean cooperation, and it is part of the American
strategy of divide and conquer, a strategy trying to get as much of the
benefits for American companies” at the expense of the region and its
people.

Venezuela’s acting ambassador to
the Permanent Mission to the UN, Aura Mahuampi Rodriguez de Ortiz, warned the
world body about Latin American debt during her participation in the General Debate
on Macroeconomic Policies in October. She stressed: “The persistence of
the foreign debt of the developing countries affects negatively on its process
of development. It is not worthy to direct resources for the development of
poor countries if such resources end up directed to the payment of the foreign
debt” instead of going to economic development internally. She also spoke
of the new Bank of the South, how it will help strengthen regional integration
and also fairly distribute investments and finance projects to reduce poverty
and social exclusion.

A less publicized Bank of ALBA
(Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) will also begin operating by year end
under “a new regional financial architecture under principles that create
a new form of channeling financial resources” to its four country alliance
– Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Chavez first proposed ALBA as
an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2001 with Venezuela, Cuba,
and Bolivia
its original members in December, 2004. Nicaragua then joined the alliance
in January, 2007 under its newly elected president, Daniel Ortega, who signed
on as his first act in office. ALBA’s goal is ambitious. It is the
comprehensive integration of the region and development of the “social
state” for all its people. It is boldly based on member states’
complementarity, not competition; solidarity, not domination; cooperation, not
exploitation; and respect for each participating nation’s sovereign right to be
free from the grip of other countries and corporate giants.

In April, the 5th ALBA summit
was held in Caracas
to discuss ways to improve the alliance. Initiatives covered included a
Permanent (coordinating) Secretariat and a plan to create 12 public companies
to be co-managed by ALBA member states. Its goal is to strengthen key economic
sectors in areas of energy, agriculture, telecommunications, infrastructure,
industrial supplies and cement production. ALBA country foreign ministers then
agreed in June to create a development Bank of ALBA to help finance these
ventures with low-cost credit. It will complement the Banco del Sur and also be
headquartered in Caracas.

Uncertain Future Prospects

Socially responsible regional
banks, like those discussed above, will challenge the dominant institutions of
finance capital if they fulfill their promise. But therein lies the problem.
These new institutions aren’t panaceas and they may end up letting capital
interests exploit them for their own advantage. In addition, financial autonomy
alone won’t free the region from Washington’s
grip without greater change. What’s needed are sweeping nationalizations of
basic industries, an end to one-way WTO-style trade deals, socially
redistributing national resources, developing local economies, achieving land
and housing reform, plus a sweeping commitment to social equity and a resolve
to end a 25 year neoliberal nightmare. From 1960 to 1980, the region’s per
capita income growth was 82%. From 1980 to 2000, however, it was 9%, and from
2000 to 2005 only 4%. For the region, it meant sweeping poverty, inequality and
the most extreme disparity between the super-rich and desperate poor in the
world. 

Change is needed, and Venezuela under
Hugo Chavez has done most in the region to achieve it. Finance Minister Rodrigo
Cabezas just presented his government’s 2008 budget to the National Assembly
that allocates 46% of it to social spending. It devotes special attention to
health and education but also to subsidized and free food, land reform,
housing, micro credit, job training, cooperatives and more as Chavez continues
to use his nation’s resources to address the needs of his people. Since he took
office, social spending per person is up more than threefold and in 2006 was
20.9% of GDP.

Chavez now has an ally in Ecuador under
Rafael Correa, whose early efforts are promising. Hopefully, they’ll continue
under a new constitution to be drafted in the next six months and then put to a
national referendum next year. Other Bank of the South founding countries like Brazil, Argentina,
and Bolivia,
however, claim to be center-left but, in fact, embrace 1990s neoliberalism, and
financial autonomy won’t change that. The Bank of the South will only work if
it fulfills a mandate to prioritize local needs and development, not corporate
ones. That’s a tall order, and achieving it won’t be easy with its dominant
member, Brazil under Lula,
closely tied to Washington
and in its grip.

Nonetheless, small signs of
change are emerging, the Bank of the South may be one of them, and a new
generation of leftist leaders may in the end break Washington’s weakening (but still strong)
hold on the region. That’s the hope, and every step forward means more power to
the people and another possible world.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago
and can be reached at [email protected].

Also visit his blog
site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and
Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Mondays at noon US central time.

The election night highs for Palestinian citizens of Israel – Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats – turned into a week of delegitimising rhetoric from Israeli politicians.

Nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra’am and the Joint List, a 64 percent increase on 2022, and adding them to opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc would give an anti-Netanyahu coalition 67 seats; without them, only a unity deal between the main Zionist blocs or another election is possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud alleged the election had been “stolen” by Palestinian parties with unproven claims of Qatari financing. Qatar denied such accusations, as police sources told The Times of Israel that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. By Sunday, election committee chairman Noam Sohlberg declared the election “conducted properly”.

However, the rhetoric delegitimising the Palestinian vote is now being reflected in the coalition negotiations under way. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, has ruled out Palestinian partners, and Eisenkot has presented four conditions for anyone joining his coalition that would be anathema to the Palestinian parties, including recognising Israel as “a Jewish, democratic, liberal, and egalitarian state”, and mandatory national service for all citizens, including Palestinians.

However, Palestinian politicians continue to express a willingness to back an Eisenkot government from outside – if only to enable the departure of Netanyahu and the far right. Meanwhile, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv for a coalition that includes the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

10 days of siege in Hebron

While the Israeli electorate was consumed by the election’s unclear results, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continued enduring a variety of sieges, most prominently in Hebron. By October 29, Al Jazeera’s data unit counted 10 entrances sealed and about 5,000 people displaced. The city saw at least 120 arrests and 13 businesses demolished by Friday, when the army also blew up the homes of two men it blamed for an attack. Palestinian officials accused the government of using the operation to win settler votes; no Israeli official has said so outright.

On November 2, Governor Khaled Dudin announced the army had withdrawn from Hebron, and that displaced families could return. The Jerusalem Post reported that the army’s chief of staff recommended leaving Hebron before the election, but that Netanyahu refused.

But even with the operation over, the damage remains following more than 120 arrests and daily economic losses the governor put at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.8m) in a city responsible for about 40 percent of Palestinian industrial output.

Sieges in homes, expulsions from land

But Hebron was only the largest of many closures that continue to plague the West Bank. In Masafer Yatta, at least 12 villages were cut off, and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that forces detained 10 teachers from the Jinba school on Sunday.

Yousef Shanaran – who has been besieged in his home with his family in Wadi Rakhim for four weeks now – told Al Jazeera on Monday that settlers have now poisoned the well outside his family home, which the family already was unable to access for days at a time due to the siege. “No water, no food, nothing at all I’ve got,” he said. “Nobody is allowed to bring anything to us.”

These sieges continue as settlers, and increasingly Israeli forces, disrupt the olive harvest across the West Bank. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 397 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in the first 26 days of October – a monthly high since OCHA began tracking such incidents in 2006.

Across villages, a familiar pattern has emerged: settlers attack pickers, the army declares a closed military zone and orders the farmers out, and the harvest is lost.

Amid reports of detentions and deportations of solidarity activists who came to the West Bank to assist in the olive harvest in recent days, activists accused settlers of assaulting three activist journalists at Umm al-Khair, and Israel revoked Brad Lander’s travel authorisation after he was detained while harvesting olives two weeks ago.

Gaza: Deadly ‘ceasefire’ continues

In Gaza, attacks continued on a daily basis as the UN human rights office warned on October 30 that Palestinians are being pushed into an ever smaller area, calling the “Yellow Line” a “kill zone” that is moving westward.

By November 2, the Ministry of Health put the death toll since last year’s ceasefire at 1,593. Sunday was the deadliest day of the week, with at least eight killed. Among those reported killed over the past week:

• Government and police personnel were among those killed. On October 28, a drone strike on a Ministry of Economy facility in al-Mawasi, Rafah, where staff and security personnel had gathered, killed five people, including Ministry of Agriculture official Wajdi Abu Bakr, who died on Sunday from injuries sustained in the attack.
• On November 1, a drone strike in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, killed five men whom Gaza’s Interior Ministry said were police officers.
• Israeli attacks also killed children. Six-year-old Tahani Shalalfeh died of a gunshot wound in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, on October 27, and Yamen Saqr, eight, died on October 30 of wounds from Israeli fire in Khan Younis, according to Wafa and local activists. The young child Zain Owais was reported killed on November 1 with his father, Mohammed Ali Owais, and a third man in a strike near Taj Mall in Gaza City.
• On October 27, a young man was killed in an air strike in west Rafah, and a member of the Bseiso family died of earlier wounds in Gaza City, Gaza Now reported. Mohammad al-Bayouk was killed in Khan Younis on October 28, and Mohammed al-Najjar was killed near Jabalia on Thursday.
• On Friday, the body of a 47-year-old man killed in an air strike at al-Waha, north of Gaza City, was recovered, Wafa reported.
• Ibrahim Saeed died on Sunday of wounds from tank fire in al-Musaddar, and Yusuf Abu Younis died Monday of wounds from a drone strike in Khan Younis the day before, according to local activist Hamza al-Masri.
• On Monday, Mahmoud Qaffa and Asaad Qeshta were killed in separate air strikes in Khan Younis and Ibrahim al-Saayida, 40, in al-Musaddar, according to Wafa and Haaretz.

Israeli authorities claimed many of those killed this week were Hamas fighters, though no evidence was provided. Among those were Diaa Abu al-Rous, killed north of Nuseirat on Saturday, and Mohammed Qudeih, killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis the same day, who the military claimed were members of Hamas’s Nukhba Forces; Palestinian reports describe Abu al-Rous as a teacher.

Such killings take place with winter closing in and humanitarian conditions struggling to improve: two infant girls died of burns in a tent fire in al-Mawasi on Friday, and the shelter picture is dire, with Gaza’s Social Development Ministry saying about 200,000 tents are needed, yet only dozens have arrived due to Israeli entry restrictions.

With no hospitals in Gaza fully functioning, the Red Crescent warned on Monday that the health system is at risk of collapse after 26 hospitals went out of service – with fuel shortages threatening the remaining facilities.

Israeli forces and settlers have escalated pogroms and raids across the occupied West Bank, attacking and injuring Palestinians, restricting their movement, carrying out arrests and demolishing homes.

This comes as a military offensive and siege on the Hebron governorate entered its seventh day – an operation that has displaced or besieged hundreds of Palestinian families and kept tens of thousands of students out of classrooms.

In the Qalandiya refugee camp just north of occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces carried out a raid that triggered clashes on Thursday. Two children were wounded, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.

It said its teams treated a 15-year-old boy who was shot with live ammunition in both legs, and a child, aged 12, who was injured by live-bullet fragments. Both were taken to hospital.

In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers and settlers beat disabled Palestinian Mohammad Ahmad Ayesh Thawabta in the village of al-Maniya, southeast of Bethlehem, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

In the northern West Bank, Israeli forces detained 13 Palestinians, including three brothers, in raids before dawn on Thursday, the Palestinian Prisoners Media Office and local sources said. Most of the raids were in the Nablus governorate, where soldiers searched homes and harassed families.

Hebron offensive

In Hebron, Israeli forces continued raids and closures that began last week after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a gun attack. Both Palestinian suspects were also killed.

Hebron Governor Khaled Dudin said on Thursday that 537 families, comprising 3,361 people, have been forced from their homes, Wafa reported.

They include 232 infants, 326 older people, 147 pregnant or breastfeeding women and 213 people with chronic illnesses. Municipal figures put the total number affected, including those under siege, at about 5,000 people from 780 families.

Dudin said the offensive has disrupted education for about 262,000 students across 589 schools in the governorate this week, forcing schools to move to remote learning. Officials estimated daily economic losses at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.9m).

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli forces detained 110 Palestinians in the governorate from Friday to Wednesday. Soldiers beat two men in Dura and Wad al-Saman and arrested two brothers while they were ploughing their land east of Yatta, it said. Israeli forces also raided homes in Taffuh and Halhul, and settlers attacked vehicles at the city’s closed northern entrance, it added.

Memorials demolished

In nearby Masafer Yatta, armed settlers attacked US journalist Jasper Nathaniel and two activists in the village of Umm al-Khair on Wednesday. Russian activist Adele Shoko said on X that the settlers beat and threatened them and stole their equipment and Nathaniel was pepper-sprayed and arrested.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli forces are still operating in Hebron, blocking access and imposing tight restrictions on movement across the governorate.

They are “disrupting Palestinians’ access to livelihoods, education and healthcare. Most displaced families are staying with relatives,” OCHA said, calling for the prevention of further forced displacements and demolitions.

Israeli forces also demolished memorials to Palestinians in several parts of the Hebron governorate on Thursday. In Dura, south of Hebron city, soldiers fired a heavy barrage of tear gas before bulldozing a mural bearing the images of several of the town’s dead, including Bajis Abu Atwan, who was killed in the 1970s.

The targeting of memorials “appears to be a new pattern recently adopted by Israeli forces across all West Bank governorates – though at a higher rate here in Hebron”, Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Nassar said, reporting from Dura.

Israeli military and settler attacks across the West Bank have intensified since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Christine Lagarde will leave the post in February, nine months before the end of her eight-year term.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde will step down months before her term ends, kicking off a race to succeed her against a turbulent backdrop in the eurozone.

Lagarde announced on Thursday that she will leave the post on February 7, about nine months before the scheduled end of her eight-year term. She said in a filmed statement posted on X that she was leaving “with a sense of good work done and an ECB that is fit for the future”.

The move gives European Union leaders time to choose her successor before April’s French presidential election, which polls have suggested far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is favoured to win.

The timing could allow current European Council members, including French President Emmanuel Macron, to take part in appointing Lagarde’s successor before France’s vote.

Macron, who is not allowed to run again, thanked Lagarde in a post on X for “the determined action she led at the head of the European Central Bank” during “a period marked by numerous crises”.

“The transition at the head of the ECB must now be prepared in an orderly and balanced manner with our European partners,” the leader of the eurozone’s second-largest economy added.

However, Markus Ferber, a German member of the European Parliament, warned: “If the impression arises that such a departure is timed around national elections, it damages trust in an institution that must stand above any domestic political calculation.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, leader of the eurozone’s largest economy, said Lagarde had led the bank “with great aplomb during challenging times”, and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen thanked Lagarde “for everything you have done for Europe and the euro”.

French Finance Minister Roland Lescure praised her tenure. “Christine Lagarde has been an exceptional President of the ECB. As Europe navigated through crises and difficult times, she brilliantly modernised and strengthened the institution,” he posted on social media.

Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, told the Reuters news agency the early exit gives governments “an opportunity to appoint a successor who will safeguard European values and protect the ECB’s independence”.

Markets appeared unfazed. “Our view is that institutional behaviour is likely to outlast Lagarde and be quite similar, whoever takes over,” Simon Dangoor, head of fixed income macro investing at Goldman Sachs told Reuters.

Lagarde, appointed in October 2019, steered the bank through the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the United States-Israel war on Iran.

The ECB faced criticism for responding too slowly to the 2022 inflation surge, caused by post-pandemic supply chain bottlenecks and the war on Ukraine. Inflation is currently running at almost double the bank’s 2 percent target amid worries over France’s public finances.

A former French finance minister and head of the International Monetary Fund, Lagarde arrived in Frankfurt in 2019 as the first ECB chief with no formal economics training or central banking experience, prompting some market participants to warn of a “credibility risk”.

In March 2020 as the pandemic shook sovereign debt markets, she said the bank was not there to narrow the gap between Italian and German borrowing costs. She went on to show that political diplomacy could steer a central bank through historic shocks.

Sources told the AFP news agency that leaving early would give Lagarde “greater freedom to express her views”. She has hinted she could campaign in the French presidential race, saying a European voice was needed in the debate.

Video footage posted online showed several men, some of them armed, beating Nathaniel and Andrey X.

Russian activist Adele Shoko has said that Israeli settlers attacked her alongside two of her colleagues in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank, according to social media posts.

Shoko said on social media platform X that she, US journalist Jasper Nathaniel, and Israeli-Russian activist Andrey X were beaten and threatened by armed settlers who stole equipment and personal items.

“Jasper and I were also beaten. Jasper was then pepper-sprayed and arrested,” Shoko wrote, adding that Nathaniel was taken away by Israeli forces.

Shoko said Andrey X suffered a concussion and lost consciousness multiple times during the incident before being detained by authorities.

“Andrey was severely beaten and lost consciousness several times in front of police. Despite this, he was denied hospital treatment. He was put in an ambulance – but instead of being taken to hospital, he was taken to a police station. He is still there, arrested and being denied medical care,” she wrote.

Video footage Shoko posted online showed several men, some of them armed, beating Nathaniel and Andrey X. Further video showed Israeli authorities leading away Nathaniel while he shouted that he had just been beaten up.

The assault follows an October 16 incident in Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, where masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers harvesting olives, setting trees on fire and throwing stones using slingshots.

Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, who was covering the attack, was beaten, robbed, and hospitalised, while a Palestinian man was shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers who arrived on the scene and fired live ammunition and tear gas.

Levine, who was wearing a protective vest marked “PRESS”, said settlers repeatedly kicked and beat her on the ground before stealing her passport, phone, and camera equipment. Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray condemned the “unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job”, while several US lawmakers called for an investigation and an end to settler violence in the region.

Israel says it will close all land crossings with the occupied West Bank when it holds a general election on Tuesday.

Israel has said it will close all land crossings with the occupied West Bank on the day of its general election next week.

The Israeli army said in a statement early on Sunday that it would bar Palestinian workers from entering most areas of the West Bank from Sunday through Monday, and a full closure of crossings into and out of the territory will be enforced on Tuesday, the day of the Israeli vote.

The announcement comes a day after Israeli army imposed a lockdown in Hebron and displaced thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

It has conducted hundreds of raids since Friday’s attack by two Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli army reserve base, which killed two Israeli soldiers. The two Palestinians were also killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a “full lockdown” of the occupied West Bank following the attack, while Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed that “about 2,000” people had been displaced.

“They will not be allowed to return to their neighbourhood until we’ve finished dealing with all the Hamas issues in Hebron,” Katz said in an interview with public broadcaster Kan.

‘Complete blockade’

Hebron’s Mayor Yousef al-Ja’bari told Al Jazeera that the city of Hebron and several neighbouring villages were under a complete blockade.

He also said on Saturday that 2,200 people had been forced from their homes by Israeli troops and raids.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, has called for international pressure on Israel to protect Hebron’s residents, who said soldiers announced forced evacuation orders over loudspeakers late at night, leaving them with no time to prepare and few places to go.

The PA called Israel’s actions “collective punishment”, citing the demolition of homes, forced displacement of entire neighbourhoods, and the “closure and siege of Palestinian cities”.

About 200,000 Palestinians live in the city of Hebron, and a further 600,000 in Hebron governorate, making it the West Bank’s most populous area.

The Israeli military has said the operation will last several days.

But Netanyahu suggested bigger action was coming, saying he was planning an operation on a scale not seen since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, is facing a tight race for a new term in Tuesday’s vote, and analysts say he is trying to capitalise on ongoing regional military conflicts and national security fears to anchor his re-election campaign.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said about 2,000 residents had been displaced by the operation, which has led to at least one whole street appearing to have been flattened, according to footage shared online.

Even before the entry and exit bans on workers were announced by the IDF on Sunday, the military had cordoned off the city, heavily restricting the movement of its 200,000 residents.

It is common for Israeli forces to demolish the homes of Palestinians who are suspected of carrying out attacks on Israelis in the West Bank – a practice Israeli rights groups have criticised as collective punishment.

Friday’s shooting came during a tense time for the region, just days ahead of Israel’s election taking place on Tuesday.

In an interview with Israel’s i24 television channel released on Saturday, Netanyahu threatened a “very big surprise” for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the territory.

Hebron Mayor Youssef al-Jaabari said the operation was being “driven by the elections” and that Netanyahu and his ministers were attempting to secure the votes of the far right and the settlers.

On Saturday, thousands gathered in Tel Aviv for a large anti-government demonstration.

The protest was organised by the October Council, a group founded by the families of victims and hostages taken by militants on 7 October 2023, to demand accountability for the failure to prevent the Hamas-led attack.

“Three days before the election, we will hold the culminating event marking three years of struggle to uncover the truth, demand accountability, and establish a state commission of inquiry,” the October Council wrote on X ahead of the rally.

The gathering saw the participation of the leaders of the four main opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief of staff who is neck and neck with Netanyahu.

Palestinians in Hebron are ‘living in fear’ with the city closed, while Israeli forces arrest dozens across West Bank.

Israel has imposed a lockdown and displaced thousands of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron, as the military conducts raids in the occupied West Bank following the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.

This comes as the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Saturday called for international pressure on Israel to protect Hebron’s residents, who said soldiers announced evacuation orders over loudspeakers late at night, leaving them with no time to prepare and few places to move to.

Hebron’s mayor Yousef al-Ja’bari told Al Jazeera that 2,200 people had been forced from their homes as hundreds of Israeli raids took place since Friday’s attack by two Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli army reserve base. The two Palestinians were killed, as well as the two Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then ordered a “full lockdown” of the West Bank following the attack.

Mayor al-Ja’bari said on Saturday that Hebron residents can neither enter nor leave the city.

Israeli soldiers also fired a stun grenade at Al Jazeera journalists near the Farsh al-Hawa checkpoint in Hebron, as they documented an Israeli operation to bulldoze homes and vehicles in the area.

The Israeli military carried out raids across at least 15 areas of the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground reported.

Those targeted include Jenin and Nablus in the north; Ramallah, Al-Bireh, Birzeit, and occupied East Jerusalem in the centre; and Bethlehem in the south.

Israeli forces have arrested about 70 Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said.

The PA, which governs the West Bank, called Israel’s actions “collective punishment”, citing the demolition of homes, forced displacement of entire neighbourhoods, and the “closure and siege of Palestinian cities”, and urged the international community to intervene, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Meanwhile, Hamas said in a statement that the “campaigns and escalations carried out by the occupation and its criminal settlers against our people will only fuel further outrage”.

Hundreds of thousands ‘under siege’

Around 200,000 Palestinians live in the city of Hebron itself, and a further 600,000 in Hebron governorate, making it the West Bank’s most populous governorate.

Those 800,000 Palestinians in Hebron governorate are “now under siege, with all entrances and exits closed since morning”, Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist and political analyst based in Hebron, told Al Jazeera.

“Inside the city, there is no safe place for anyone to hide … the city is really in fear,” Amro said.

Political positioning

Israeli politicians are trying to “capitalise” on the attack ahead of parliamentary elections on October 27 , Al Jazeera’s West Bank correspondent Nour Odeh said.

“Netanyahu, his Likud party, and his allies in this right-wing coalition are behind in the polls,” said Odeh, so in response they are “trying to put up a brave front, saying they’re combating Palestinians”.

Just days before Israelis are set to vote, Netanyahu avoided answering whether he planned to dismantle the PA, but said a “big surprise” awaits the organisation.