Israeli army raids Birzeit University, near Ramallah, West Bank, on 6 Jan 2026

Rawan Suleiman reports in Haaretz on 6 January 2026:

Israeli security forces raided the campus of Bir Zeit University near Ramallah on Tuesday during a demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners that was organized by the student council, the university said.

The university’s director of public relations, Nardeen Al-Mimi, told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that the troops fired live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it provided medical treatment to 11 people at the university, five of whom were wounded by live fire and four by inhaling tear gas.

The university added that, during the raid, soldiers detained Vice President of Academic Affairs Asem Khalil for questioning.

Al-Mimi also told Wafa that the soldiers destroyed the university’s main gate, broke into several buildings and confiscated materials belonging to student activists. University President Dr. Talal Shahwan said the soldiers arrived in around 20 vehicles. A reporter for Al-Araby television said the soldiers closed off all the entrances to the university.

After the demonstration, the student council had planned to hold a premiere screening of the film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which tells the story of a 5-year-old who was killed in Gaza by Israeli tank fire as she waited for help, while trapped in a car with dead relatives. The university said many students had planned to attend.

Dr. Marwan Ghanem, a hydrogeology professor at Birzeit, told Al-Araby that he was surprised by the raid. He said the army confiscated microphones and protest signs and raided every department in the university.

Ghanem said he assumed the goal of the raid was to warn both the student union and the university administration against conducting activities that show national solidarity. A few days ago, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli security personnel had warned the university against holding such activities on campus.

“Raids of the university have become commonplace, but this time, they crossed all the lines,” Shahwan said at a press conference on Tuesday.

“The goal of the raids is to prevent the university from doing its job and fulfilling its educational, social and human obligations,” and thereby to “make the nation ignorant, control the way the nation thinks and steer it according to the occupation’s goals.”

The Palestinian Education Ministry denounced the raid and said it grossly violated the international consensus about protecting educational institutions. It urged the International Association of Universities, the Association of Arab Universities and international human rights organizations to intervene by taking a strong stand against such raids.

In response, the IDF said that “Over the past few days, intelligence indications arose about a gathering in support of terrorism that was supposed to take place today on the grounds of Birzeit University, under the Binyamin Brigade jurisdiction,” referring to the military unit in the area. “When the gathering began, IDF forces and troops from the Border Police rushed into the university grounds, used crowd-control methods, fired into the air only and dispersed the gathering.”

“Later, another violent disturbance developed, with hundreds of participants. It included throwing rocks and boulders from roofs on the [university] grounds at the forces in a manner that constituted an immediate threat to them. The forces responded with crowd-dispersal tactics and fire directed at key violent instigators. The IDF will continue to act decisively and will not permit terror incitement against Israelis.”

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