Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh on Tuesday accused the Israeli government of turning Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank into “mass detention camps.”
In a statement, al-Sheikh cited “iron gates and checkpoints,” and the uprooting of “olive trees from hundreds of dunams of land.”
He called on countries worldwide to intervene to “protect the Palestinian people from racism and ethnic cleansing,” and urged the UN, during its ongoing meetings, to adopt measures to oblige Israel to “halt all its measures.”
“Statements will not stop the occupation’s crimes,” al-Sheikh said, calling instead for support for the Palestinian people’s steadfastness on their homeland and for “strict and deterrent measures” to curb what he described as the occupation’s expansion, racism and crimes.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said Tuesday that the Israeli authorities had issued four military orders targeting the removal of wild vegetation and the uprooting of trees from more than 438 dunams of Palestinian-owned land in Jenin, Ramallah and Al-Bireh in the northern and central West Bank.
According to the commission, tree-removal orders have risen sharply in 2026, with 51 orders targeting about 2,093 dunams since the start of the year, already exceeding 2025’s full-year figure of 47 orders covering 1,613 dunams.
Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank now number 898, including 146 iron gates installed since Oct. 7, 2023, according to commission statistics.
Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on Gaza continue. According to local and medical sources, two Palestinians were killed and others injured Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike on a gathering near a coffee shop in the Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City.
Gaza’s health authorities said Tuesday that five Palestinians were killed and 25 injured over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, to 1,399, with 4,863 injured. The overall Palestinian death toll since Oct. 7, 2023, has risen to 73,919, with 174,977 injured. ■
