3,665 Israeli Crimes in a Week Targeting All Forms of Palestinian Life

Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza, as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. Photo-AP

Jeddah, 25-03-2025 - The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Media Observatory on Israeli Crimes against Palestinians recorded 979 Palestinians murdered between March 18 and 24, 2025, and documented 1,474 others wounded. The deliberate killings perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have not ceased since January 19, continuing until March 23, 2025. This is evident from the attached chart, which shows a significant increase in killings during the period that coincided with the start of the ceasefire, January 19-25, 2025, and in the period of March 18-23, 2025. This indicates that the occupation forces are employing killings as a means of collective punishment to achieve political gains, rather than as a routine military operation. The close proximity of the number of murdered Palestinians to the number of those wounded also reflects a clear intent to inflict fatal injuries on Palestinians. 

The second wave of Israeli aggression is even more severe, as its missiles target the rubble remaining in Gaza, making the crimes of the occupying forces even more horrific, and crossing the line from genocidal warfare into genocidal acts that extend beyond death. All that was further illustrated in the updates of the last week, where the number of Israeli crimes between March 18 and 24, 2025, reached 3,665 across the Palestinian territories, a record high compared to previous weeks.

The number of Palestinians murdered from October 7, 2023, to March 25, 2025, reached 51,943, and 121,448 others were wounded.

In a brief review of the crimes of the past seven days, the Israeli occupying forces targeted the United Nations Office for Project Services in Deir al-Balah, murdering one employee and wounding others. Israeli bombardment also targeted the home of Palestinian journalist Hussam al-Titi, who worked for the American ABC News network. He was murdered along with his wife and daughter in western Gaza. Journalist Hussam Shabat, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher in Beit Hanoun, and journalist Mohammed Mansour of Palestine Today TV were also murdered. The Israeli bombing also included a mosque in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah, Nasser Hospital, and the remaining civilian homes in Khan Yunis, Beit Lahia, al-Tuffah neighborhood, and al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood. The Israeli shells murdered six children at once, amid a lack of medical resources in hospitals in the northern, central, and southern Gaza Strip due to the complete Israeli blockade.

The Israeli Defense Minister, Yisrael Katz, also announced the intention of his forces to occupy more territory in the Gaza Strip. His troops launched a ground attack in the Beit Lahia area. This coincided with the establishment of an Israeli agency to displace Palestinians inside Gaza.

In the West Bank, the Israeli occupation forces arrested 232 Palestinians and demolished, burned, and occupied 12 homes in the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm, Al-Quds, Jericho, and Bethlehem. Settlers seized a Palestinian home in the Old City of Hebron, and the occupation forces prevented its Palestinian owners from returning to it. The Israeli occupation forces bulldozed and destroyed roads and lands that had been established and prepared for a university project in the town of Bani Na’im in Hebron. Other acts of destruction by the Israeli forces included, the bulldozing of an area of agricultural land adjacent to Alona Park, the cutting down of dozens of olive trees in the town of Hawara in Nablus, bulldozing a plot of land, and demolishing a stonewall surrounding it in the village of al-Jib in Al-Quds. Israeli forces also demolished a sheep pen and destroyed a solar cell room in the Arab al-Malihat community west of Jericho, and confiscated an agricultural tractor in Bethlehem. 

Regarding attacks on mosques during the holy month of Ramadan, the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque was subjected to daily raids and attacks by the occupation police and Israeli extremists. They continued to impose strict restrictions on the entry of worshippers from other West Bank governorates to Al-Quds to perform the third Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa, in addition to restricting entry to the mosque from within Al-Quds itself. For the third consecutive week, the Israeli occupation authorities also refused to hand over the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to the Palestinians, as is customary on Fridays during Ramadan every year.

On the settlement activities news, the past week witnessed 10 settlement activities, the most prominent of which was the approval by the Israeli occupation’s security council to separate 13 settlements in the West Bank from their neighboring settlements, and the initiation of procedures to recognize them as “independent” settlements. The Israeli occupation forces issued a military order to evacuate approximately 120 dunums of Palestinian agricultural land belonging to the village of Jalbun in Jenin. On the other hand, settlers paved settlement roads in the Ramallah Governorate and the northern Jordan Valley. Settlers also began constructing a pastoral settlement outpost near the Auja Spring in Jericho. Other settlers installed electricity poles to supply electricity to a settlement outpost built on the Palestinian lands of the village of Farkha in Salfit.

Meanwhile, settlers bulldozed areas of agricultural land in the village of Umm Safa in Ramallah, and others erected iron awnings near Palestinian residential tents in the Ein al-Hilweh area in the northern Jordan Valley. In total, within seven days, the number of attacks launched by settlers on Palestinian villages reached 30 attacks, concentrated in the category of livestock crimes, where settlers in the village of Al-Badhan in Nablus burned a sheep pen and a tent in Salfit. They also released their livestock in the Nab’ al-Ghazal spring area and in agricultural lands in Wadi al-Faw in Tubas, in the town of Al-Auja in Jericho, and in the areas of Sha’b al-Batam and Wadi Ma’in in Hebron. A settler also ran over a herd of sheep with his vehicle in Khirbet Samra in Tubas, while another ran over a herd of sheep near the Al-Burj area in the town of Deir Dibwan in Ramallah. Other settlers stole sheep from the village of Jalud in Nablus, and finally, settlers threw dead sheep into a water collection well in the town of Yatta with the aim of polluting it. – OIC News