Israel arrests nine at Tel Aviv protest against West Bank settler violence

What the report says

Al Jazeera, citing Israeli media and protest organisers, reported that police arrested nine people during a Tel Aviv demonstration on Saturday against settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The protest took place on Kaplan Street and was organised by the left-wing Hadash party and allied groups. Mothers Against Violence said more than 200 people joined and accused police of forceful treatment of demonstrators, while police said, according to local media, the gathering was unauthorised and obstructed the road.

The demonstration followed a deadly confrontation a day earlier in Tal, a town near Nablus and the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad. Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces killed four Palestinians during a settler incursion on local land, while two Israelis were also killed. A local Fatah official, Essam Saifi, said about 30 settlers entered Tal and attempted to enter two homes before residents confronted them. Al Jazeera said video from the incident showed a Palestinian man taking a settler’s rifle and shooting him before soldiers killed the Palestinian man.

After the Tal incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government ordered a broad West Bank military operation, Al Jazeera reported. Israeli forces arrested nearly 50 Palestinians in Tal while searching about 70 homes, and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said at least 80 Palestinians were detained across the West Bank the next day, describing the arrests as collective punishment.

The episode matters because it links rising settler attacks, Israeli military raids and rare Israeli street protests over West Bank violence. Al Jazeera cited official Palestinian figures saying at least 1,182 Palestinians have been killed, 13,000 wounded and nearly 24,000 arrested in the West Bank since the Gaza war began in October 2023.