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JENIN, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian Freedom Theatre in the occupied West Bank will welcome actors back this weekend, just over a fortnight after an Israeli raid on the centre sparked an international outcry.

Its artistic director Ahmed Tobasi told AFP the theatre in Jenin refugee camp had become a symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

He said troops broke into and vandalised the small cultural centre earlier this month during a wider raid on Jenin, leaving behind a trail of damage and Stars of David graffitied across the walls. The theatre said soldiers also arrested several employees in their homes.

Tobasi, who said he was among those detained, is now back at work and determined to keep the centre open.

“For me, this is resistance,” the 39-year-old said as he gave AFP a tour of the theatre, which was set up in 2006.

Soon after the raid on December 13 a Freedom Theatre appeal for the release of its staff won international support, with demonstrations in the streets of New York and Paris and playwrights, actors and directors from Britain to Mexico expressing their support.

Since its founding, the unassuming performance space has become symbolic for Palestinians and their supporters, with its actors touring the world staging plays.

Staff said they believed Israeli forces had gone out of their way to target the theatre.

The Israeli forces described the wider raid on Jenin, which Palestinian health authorities say killed 11 people, as designed to combat “terrorists” in the camp.

“This is a theatre — there are no weapons or terrorists here,” Tobasi said.

While the raid targeted a number of buildings in the camp, Tobasi said that to reach the theatre troops would have needed to turn off the main road and walk around 20 metres towards its entrance.

Another staff member, Ranin Odeh, said the centre was singled out for its reputation as “a place of resistance through art”.

“I felt so angry to see Israeli soldiers inside. The theatre is like my home. They want to kill everything — not just people, but ideas too,” said the 31-year-old, who runs the theatre’s youth programme.

Staff spent several days clearing up and plan to stage their first big event, an end-of-year workshop for young actors, on Sunday.

The army has not responded to AFP’s request for comment.

Door-to-door arrests 

At the scene, Tobasi led AFP journalists past broken locks, splintered doorframes and smashed black and white photos.

“What kind of behaviour is this from soldiers?” he said, standing next to a red Star of David sprayed across a projector screen.

The theatre posted an image on social media which appears to show troops and a military vehicle just outside the building. AFP has not been able to verify the picture.

Soldiers went door to door arresting members of staff from their homes, the Freedom Theatre said in a series of online statements, adding they were among more than 100 Palestinians detained in Jenin.

Drama graduate Jamal Abu Joas was released after more than a week in detention, while producer and manager Mustafa Sheta remains in custody, said Tobasi, who was still shaken from his own ordeal.

Tobasi said he was blindfolded, had his hands cuffed behind his back and was held for more than 12 hours at the Salam checkpoint west of Jenin. He accused army reservists of beating him.

Violence in the West Bank — captured by Israel during the 1967 June War and occupied ever since — has surged following October 7.

Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 314 people in the territory, Palestinian health officials say.

Jenin’s refugee camp, a stronghold for Palestinian armed groups, is regularly targeted by Israel in deadly raids. The Palestinian health ministry says many of those killed have been civilians.

Tobasi, who was born in and grew up in the camp, said the theatre had given him a way to resist occupation without violence. It was a break from the reality of life in the camp and a chance to imagine an alternative.

Following the raid, he was more convinced than ever of the centre’s power.

“Theatre is the place where we can express, fight and resist all,” Tobasi said.

GENEVA — A UN report released today details the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, after 7 October 2023, and calls on Israel to end unlawful killings and settler violence against the Palestinian population.

 The report calls for an immediate end to the use of military weapons and means during law enforcement operations, an end to arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of Palestinians, and the lifting of discriminatory movement restrictions.

 The UN Human Rights Office has verified the deaths of 300 Palestinians from 7 October to 27 December 2023 — including 79 children — in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the sudden attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in southern Israel. Of these, Israeli forces killed at least 291 Palestinians, settlers killed eight, and one Palestinian was killed either by Israeli forces or settlers. Prior to 7 October, 200 Palestinians had already been killed in the area in 2023 — the highest number in a ten-month-period since the UN began keeping records in 2005.

 “The use of military tactics means and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, reflecting on the findings of the report.

 “The violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past in the context of the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. However, the intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years,” he added.

“I call on Israel to take immediate, clear and effective steps to put an end to settler violence against the Palestinian population, to investigate all incidents of violence by settlers and Israeli  forces, to ensure effective protection of Palestinian communities against any form of forcible transfer, and to ensure the ability of herding communities displaced due to repeated attacks by armed settlers to return to their lands.”

The report, which covered the period from 7 October to 20 November, described a sharp increase in air strikes as well as in incursions by armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers sent to refugee camps and other densely populated areas in the West Bank, resulting in deaths, injuries and extensive damage to civilian objects and infrastructure. These incursions, which continue to take place, have resulted in the death of at least 105 Palestinians, among them 23 children, since 7 October up to today.

 In one of these instances, on 19 and 20 October, during a 30 hour-long incursion into Nur Shams Refugee Camp in Tulkarem, Israeli forces using military weaponry and means of engagement killed 14 Palestinians, including six children, wounded at least 20 others, and arrested 10 Palestinians, the report said. 

 Israeli forces have arrested more than 4,700 Palestinians, including about 40 journalists, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Some were stripped naked, blindfolded and restrained for long hours with handcuffs and with their legs tied, while Israeli forces stepped on their heads and backs, were spat at, slammed against walls, threatened, insulted, humiliated and in some cases subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, the report describes.

 In the weeks following 7 October, there has also been a sharp rise in settler attacks with an average of six incidents per day, such as shootings, burning of homes and vehicles, and uprooting of trees. In many incidents, settlers were accompanied by Israeli forces, or were themselves wearing Israeli forces’ uniforms, and carrying army rifles, the report said. The UN Human Rights Office documented multiple incidents of settlers attacking Palestinians harvesting their olives, including with firearms, and forcing them to leave their land, stealing their harvest and poisoning or vandalising their olive trees, depriving many Palestinians of a vital source of income.

 “The de-humanisation of Palestinians that characterises many of the settlers’ actions is very disturbing and must cease immediately. Israeli authorities should strongly censure and prevent settler violence and prosecute both its instigators and perpetrators,” said the UN Human Rights Chief.

Since 7 October, Israeli authorities have imposed severe and systematic restrictions on the movement of Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the report said. The Israeli forces has closed almost all entrances to Palestinian villages and towns to vehicular access and disconnected Palestinian cities and towns from main roads by closing road gates and placing earth mounds or concrete roadblocks.  

“The report reiterates our calls for a halt to measures that lead to the creation of a coercive environment and concerns regarding forcible transfer, in addition to the continued lack of accountability for settler and Israeli forces’ violence,” said Türk.

The High Commissioner urged Israel to grant the UN Human Rights Office access to the country, adding it was ready to report similarly on the 7 October attacks.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man during an overnight raid on Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, the territory's health ministry said on Thursday.

The military said its forces had targeted money exchange shops in Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank, accusing the businesses of providing funds to Palestinian militant groups.

An AFP journalist saw Palestinians hurl Molotov cocktails at the forces in Ramallah. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its medics treated eight people for gunshot wounds.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and regularly carries out raids there, though they are far less common in the territory's institutional heart Ramallah.

The Red Crescent said medics also treated people wounded by Israeli forces across the West Bank, in the governorates of Hebron, Jericho, Jenin and Nablus.

In Ramallah, the AFP journalist saw a damaged exchange shop with smashed glass across the floor.

Official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Israeli forces "stormed a number of money exchange shops, seized their contents and detained a number of their owners".

Surging violence has seen 522 Palestinians killed in the West Bank this year by Israeli security forces and settlers, according to a health ministry toll, 314 of them since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7.

TEHRAN — Thousands massed on Thursday in the Iranian capital for the funeral of senior Revolutionary Guards commander Razi Moussavi, three days after he was killed in what Tehran says was an Israeli strike.

The crowd in Tehran's central Imam Hossein square chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America".

Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against arch foe Iran and its allies, but Moussavi's killing in Syria came at a time of sharply heightened regional tensions over the Hamas-Israel conflict since early October.

Iranian state media says an Israeli missile strike on Monday killed Moussavi, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arms, the Quds Force, near the Syrian capital Damascus.

The Israeli army, which has launched hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets in war-torn Syria in recent years, said only that it does not comment on foreign media reports.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier on Thursday met with Moussavi's family and led a prayer over the slain general's body before it was taken to the square.

Many of the mourners were waving yellow flags imprinted with the message “I am your opponent”, a reference to Israel.

The head of the Guards, Hossein Salami, hailed Moussavi as “one of the most experienced and effective IRGC commanders in the Axis of Resistance”, Tehran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East.

Salami praised Moussavi for his key role after a former Quds Force commander, the revered Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad. Soleimani had run the Guards’ foreign operations for more than a decade.

IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif warned on Wednesday that “our response to Moussavi’s assassination will be a combination of direct action as well as [from]others led by the Axis of Resistance”.

Sharif charged that Israel’s killing of the general “was likely due to its failures” when Palestinian Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on October 7.

BEIRUT — An Israeli strike in south Lebanon killed a Hizbollah fighter, the group said Wednesday, as state media reported two of his relatives were also killed and the Iran-backed movement launched rockets in retaliation.

The border between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between the Israeli forces and Hamas ally Hizbollah, since the Israeli war on Gaza began on October 7, raising fears of a broader conflagration.

"Enemy warplanes raided, before midnight [22:00 GMT], a house... in the centre of the town of Bint Jbeil," around two kilometres from the border, killing a man, his brother and his wife, Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) said.

The NNA identified the dead as Ali Bazzi, his brother Ibrahim and his wife Shourouk Hammoud, and said another family member was wounded.

Hizbollah later announced that Ali Bazzi was one of its fighters.

A relative told AFP that Ibrahim Bazzi was an Australian citizen who had flown in for a visit about a week earlier.

At the funeral procession in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday, an AFP photographer saw three coffins draped in Hizbollah flags.

Hassan Fadlallah, a lawmaker from the Iran-backed group, told the ceremony that "no crime against civilians will pass without the enemy paying the price".

Hizbollah later Wednesday said it launched a barrage of 30 Katyusha rockets towards Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel "in response to the enemy's repeated crimes and its targeting of civilian houses in Bint Jbeil".

Since the cross-border hostilities began, more than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah combatants but also more than 20 civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military. 

 'Suicide drones' 

Exchanges of fire have been largely confined to the border area, although Israel has conducted limited strikes deeper into Lebanese territory.

Hizbollah said on Wednesday it carried out a series of other attacks on Israeli forces and positions, including one on the contested Shebaa Farms involving “suicide drones”, missiles and artillery.

The Israeli forces said in a statement that “a number of launches were identified crossing from Lebanon towards various areas in northern Israel”, adding that the army struck the sources of fire and “additional areas in Lebanon”.

It also said “fighter jets” struck “terrorist infrastructure, as well as Hizbollah military sites”. 

Lebanon’s NNA reported Israeli strikes in various areas along the southern border.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military said an anti-tank missile fired by the Shiite Muslim group wounded nine soldiers as they went to assist a civilian wounded in an earlier strike.

Israel has been pushing for Hizbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, which lies about 30 kilometres north of the border.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, called for the removal of armed personnel south of the Litani, except for UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army and state security forces.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said last week that Lebanon was ready to implement international resolutions that would help end Hizbollah’s cross-border attacks if Israel also complies and withdraws from disputed territory.

TEHRAN — Iran said on Wednesday there was "nothing new" in an International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) report which said it had recently accelerated production of highly enriched uranium after months of slowdown.

"We have done nothing new and our activity is according to the regulations," said Iran's top nuclear official Mohammad Eslami.

"We were producing the same 60 per cent, we didn't change anything and we didn't create any new capacity."

On Tuesday, the IAEA released a report saying Iran "increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023".

Iran had increased its output of 60 per cent enriched uranium to a rate of about nine kilogrammes a month since the end of November, the UN watchdog said.

That is up from about three kilogrammes a month since June, and a return to the nine kilogrammes a month it was producing during the first half of 2023.

Still higher enrichment levels of around 90 per cent are required for use in a nuclear weapon.

Iran has consistently denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons capability, insisting that its activities are entirely peaceful.

Iran appeared to have slowed its enrichment as a gesture while informal talks for a restored nuclear agreement resumed with the United States.

But animosity between the two countries has intensified in recent months, with each accusing the other of exacerbating the war between Hamas and Israel.

Iran suspended its compliance with limits on its nuclear activities set by a 2015 nuclear deal with major powers a year after then US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions.

It has since built up its stocks of enriched uranium to 22 times the level permitted under the deal, according to a confidential IAEA report seen by AFP last month.

Eslami criticised what he called a “media frenzy” around the latest IAEA report, saying it “sought to distract public attention” from the war in Gaza.