Israeli forces demolish Birzeit University memorial; 10–12 arrested in West Bank raids

Mixed · 2Israeli forces demolished a memorial inside Birzeit University, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank, on Monday 5 October 2026, according to local Palestinian sources. 1 2 Mixed · 2Sources said a force entered the campus with a military bulldozer and destroyed the memorial, which bears the names of university students killed in Israeli attacks over the years. 1 2 Mixed · 2Troops also detained a university security guard, searched several campus facilities and deployed around the grounds, the sources said. 1 2

Left · 1Al Jazeera, citing the university, says the raid came at dawn with 10 military vehicles; a bulldozer demolished the stone pillar known as the Martyrs' Monument, soldiers took away the marble stone and left a planter with a fig sapling inscribed "Water it twice". 3 Left · 1Al Jazeera says the monument, erected between 1994 and 1996, listed 38 students and alumni killed by Israeli forces, the latest being Omar al-Naasan, killed on 2 September in al-Mughayyir; it counts this as the fifth incursion onto the campus in 2026 and the 28th since 2002. 3 Mixed · 2Birzeit University posted a photograph on Facebook showing the site where the memorial had stood. 1 2

Mixed · 2Palestinian reports say that on 26 September Israeli forces raided the campus, photographed the memorial and withdrew. 1 2 Left · 1The university's administration called the demolition a violation of international law and an attack on education and national memory; students protested at the site on Tuesday, and a student using a pseudonym said soldiers had detained him for hours three weeks earlier and threatened him over political activity. 3 Mixed · 2The university has about 13,400 students in nine faculties and 174 academic programmes for 2025-26 and has repeatedly been raided, with some raids causing arrests and injuries. 1 2

Mixed · 2Anadolu Agency, citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa, reported 10 arrests, including three children and two women, in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tubas and Nablus areas; Arab News, citing the Palestinian Prisoners' Media Office, reported 12 arrests, including three children and two women, in Tubas, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Al-Bireh. 1 2 Mixed · 2Reported detentions include two people in Tammun, three children in Deir Sharaf and Qusin villages near Nablus, and people in the Ramallah and Bethlehem areas; Anadolu also cited a Tubas prisoner-society official saying a mother of four was held to pressure her husband to turn himself in. 1 2 Mixed · 2Palestinian prisoner groups say about 9,350 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, including 90 women and 350 children. 1 2

Right · 1Arab News added that the arrests came during the olive harvest, with farmers and the Al-Baydar rights group reporting settler attacks and Israeli forces blocking access to land; the Palestinian Authority's Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission counts over 14,742 settler attacks since 7 October 2023, with 66 Palestinians killed. 2 Left · 1Al Jazeera places the demolition in a wider pattern, citing Religious Zionism MP Zvi Sukkot's sledgehammer destruction of a memorial in Madama in August, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's reported list of about 40 Palestinian memorials proposed for destruction, and the removal of Jenin monuments, and says Palestinian universities have been particular targets of raids and restrictions. 3 Mixed · 2Neither Anadolu nor Arab News carries an Israeli military or government response, and their accounts rest on Palestinian sources; Al Jazeera reports no Israeli comment on this raid, but notes the Israeli military said after an August memorial demolition that it routinely removes "symbols of incitement". 3 1