Israeli army injures 24 Palestinians during the largest raid on Ramallah in years
The Israeli army carried out one of its most extensive raids on the city center of Ramallah in years, firing at civilians with teargas, stun grenades, and live ammunition.
Israeli forces wounded 24 Palestinians on Tuesday, including a 12-year-old child and a 71-year-old elderly man, in the largest raid on the city of Ramallah in years. At around 12 p.m. local time, Israeli armored vehicles entered the center of the West Bank city, firing live bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters in the crowded city center during the peak hours. Israeli forces broke into a major money exchange business and the headquarters of the Arab Bank in the central Manara Square.
The raid lasted three-and-a-half hours, during which Israeli soldiers took sniper positions on rooftops in the area, while armored Israeli vehicles blocked the city center and continued to fire tear gas and live bullets at young men who threw stones at Israeli forces.
According to local reports, tear gas canisters and stun grenades were lobbed into several local businesses, including a barber shop, a popular coffee shop, the vegetable market, and several other storefronts.
Eyewitnesses in the city center told Mondoweiss that the Israeli army confiscated large amounts of cash from Ajjouli Money Exchange office.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement that Israeli forces blocked its ambulance crews from reaching at least one injured Palestinian near the vegetable market.
‘We all thought of Gaza’
“I was sitting in a coffee shop overlooking the Lions’ Square, when suddenly I heard a loud explosion,” an eyewitness told Mondoweiss, asking not to be named. “People in the coffee shop rushed to the windows to see what was happening, then they began to back away from the windows, as the owner said the occupation army was raiding Ramallah. Then I saw an armored vehicle stationed right beside the entrance to the Arab Bank, with several soldiers standing by the door and another soldier perched atop the balcony right above the bank. He was pointing his rifle down at the square.”
“Young men were gathering behind corners, taking turns to throw stones at the occupation forces, who fired tear gas in all directions, and then I began to smell tear gas inside the coffee shop, and people inside began to cough even though employees had closed all the windows,” the eyewitness added.
Another eyewitness told Mondoweiss that she was on her way to college when the raid started. “I stopped by a cosmetics store on the Yasser Arafat Square, right beside the city center, when I suddenly saw people running outside and heard explosions of what I later understood were sound grenades,” she said. “People began to run into stores to take shelter, and we ended up with 13 people — men, women, and two children inside a cosmetics store.”
“A little girl took out some dates and passed them around, but they weren’t enough for everybody, so we split them, and then an elderly woman said, ‘May God help the people in Gaza.'”
Eyewitness account to Mondoweiss
“A female soldier came and stood in front of the store for a while, then she left, and shortly after, young men gathered in the same place and began to throw stones at the occupation soldiers,” the witness recalled, describing seeing a young man shot in the leg. “He held his leg, which was bleeding, until others carried him to an ambulance.”
The witness noted that after three hours, Palestinians sheltering in the store felt hungry. “A little girl took out some dates and passed them around, but they weren’t enough for everybody, so we split them, and then an elderly woman said, ‘May God help the people in Gaza.’ We were all at the same moment thinking of the famine in the Strip,” she added.
The adjacent twin cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh house the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian government ministries and agencies. Both cities have been the target of Israeli raids multiple times since October 2023, with Israeli forces systematically raiding money exchange businesses during each raid. In December 2023, Israeli forces staged a large raid that killed a 23-year-old Palestinian and resulted in the confiscation of $2.8 million from several money exchange offices.
In May 2024, Israeli forces fired large quantities of tear gas into Ramallah’s vegetable market during a morning raid, causing a large fire in the market stalls to break out, which extended into an adjacent commercial building and destroyed at least 80 small businesses.
Although Ramallah and al-Bireh are classified as Area A under the Oslo accords — which is supposed to be under the security control of the Palestinian Authority — Israeli forces regularly raid different neighborhoods in both cities as part of their nightly arrest campaigns across the West Bank. But daytime raids into these cities became less common after the end of the Second Intifada in 2006. Israeli forces also regularly raid other cities designated as Area A, such as Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, and Bethlehem.
The Palestinian Authority’s governor for the Ramallah and al-Bireh area, Leila Ghannam, described the raid as “organized state terrorism.” The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that seven of the wounded were hit with live bullets and four with rubber-coated bullets, while three were wounded with shrapnel, and ten suffered from asphyxiation from tear gas.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,016 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry, while over 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested in the same period.