Israeli occupation forces stormed Birzeit University, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, at dawn on Monday, June 29, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. Security forces backed by military reinforcements entered the campus and assaulted a security guard. The raid also caused damage inside the university’s Faculty of Sports building.
Security sources told WAFA that the forces beat guard Bashir Za’loul al-Khatib, 40, during the incursion. The same forces raided the eastern wing of the Faculty of Sports and destroyed its contents, according to the sources. WAFA did not specify how long the raid lasted or whether any arrests were made during Monday’s incursion.
The sources told WAFA that incursions of this kind at Birzeit University have become recurrent. They said the pattern includes arrests of students, assaults on staff, destruction of property tied to student activities, and confiscation of equipment and materials.
Monday’s raid is the latest in a long series of Israeli military operations on the campus. In a similar raid on September 21, the Israeli military arrested campus security personnel, damaged property and defaced murals on campus, according to Haaretz and a Wikipedia tracker of the broader Israeli military campaign in the West Bank, known as Operation Iron Wall. Soldiers distributed leaflets during that raid describing student organization activity as equivalent to terrorist activity. The university confirmed at the time that its Vice President for Academic Affairs, Assem Khalil, had also been detained during an earlier raid in January.
A January 6 raid on the campus, during which more than 8,000 students were present, left dozens wounded after Israeli forces fired live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades, according to Al Jazeera and the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Birzeit University president Talal Shahwan called that incident “a sad day for Birzeit University and for higher education in Palestine and the world,” according to Middle East Eye. “This is not an isolated incident, unfortunately,” Shahwan said, adding that Israeli forces had repeatedly stormed the university’s campus before.
UN special rapporteurs who examined that January raid described the pattern of repeated incursions as a deliberate policy rather than isolated violence. “Raids, arrests, intimidation, and the criminalisation of student life are tools used to undermine the right to education by attacking Palestinian institutions at their core,” the experts said in a joint statement, according to OHCHR. They added that the January raid was the 26th recorded at Birzeit University since 2002.
Regional and global impact
The recurrence of raids at Birzeit University has drawn condemnation from UN human rights experts, who said in January that Israeli forces killed 37 university students and injured 259 others across the West Bank between October 2023 and December 2025. The same experts said 463 university students, including 148 from Birzeit, and 27 higher education staff were detained during that period, most under administrative detention without charge. Palestinian rights groups, including Justice For All, have submitted evidence from earlier raids to the International Criminal Court, arguing the pattern constitutes collective punishment and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention’s protections for civilian institutions.
Background
Birzeit University, founded in 1924 and one of the most prominent Palestinian academic institutions, has been the site of recurring Israeli military operations for more than two decades. The raids at Birzeit form part of a broader Israeli military campaign in the West Bank known as Operation Iron Wall, which has included large-scale operations in Jenin, Tulkarm and Hebron since early 2026. The campaign expanded following the start of the Israel-Iran war on February 28, after which Israel imposed a general lockdown across the West Bank. Israeli officials have previously described individual raids on the university as operations against gatherings they characterize as supporting terrorism, a description Palestinian officials and university administrators reject.
What happens next
Birzeit University has not yet issued a public statement on Monday’s raid. The university’s Faculty of Sports has not indicated when the damaged section of its eastern wing will be repaired or reopened. Palestinian officials have repeatedly called on international education bodies, including the International Association of Universities, to intervene over the recurring raids, though no organizational response to Monday’s incident had been issued by the time of publication.
