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HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces detained at least four Palestinians in predawn raids on Sunday from the Hebron district in the southern occupied West Bank, including a Palestinian lawmaker.

Local sources told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the village of Surif northeast of Hebron city, where they detained Hamas bloc lawmaker Samir al-Qadhi from his house, as well as Ahmad Abd al-Fattah Haddush.

Shahir Musa Dawud, 40, was reportedly detained from his home in Yatta south of Hebron, while Izz Ghayth was detained from his home in Hebron city.

An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed Dawud's detention and informed Ma’an that one “suspected terrorist” was also detained northwest of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.

The Ramallah-area raid and subsequent detention came after a Palestinian allegedly attempted to carry out a car ramming attack Saturday evening outside northwest of Ramallah and fled the scene, with Israeli forces still searching the area as of Sunday afternoon for the suspect and erecting military checkpoints at the entrances to least seven villages. The Israeli army spokesperson could not confirm the Palestinian was detained in connection to the incident.

Hebron and its surrounding villages, specifically Yatta, have been the targets of increased raids and Israeli military presence in the wake of the deadly shooting in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, and the subsequent revelation that the alleged attackers and relatives came from Yatta, south of Hebron.
Immediately following the attack, which left four Israelis dead and multiple injured, the suspects’ hometown of Yatta was sealed by Israeli forces, with Palestinians forbidden to leave except for humanitarian or medical cases, and the Israeli army detained an unspecified number of locals during large-scale overnight raids there.

Amid reactions by Israeli leadership threatening a harsh response to the act of "terror", Israeli Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Yisrael Katz said in a statement following the attack that Yatta must undergo "a preventative 'root canal' treatment that will go down in history," adding that the town must be cordoned off for "a long time."

Israel also froze more than 83,000 permits allowing Palestinians to enter Israel and East Jerusalem during Ramadan, including freezing the work permits of 204 of the suspected attackers’ relatives who work in Israel.

Israeli authorities also froze all coordination with the besieged Gaza Strip for Ramadan, cancelling weekly visitations by elderly Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, implemented as part of a ceasefire agreement that ended Israel’s 2014 offensive on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Newly-appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman also issued an order to suspend the return of all Palestinian bodies killed during suspected attacks on Israelis, claiming that the measure could prevent future attacks, in spite of his predecessor Moshe Yaalon having argued the policy had only served to exacerbate tensions with Palestinians.

The increasingly punitive measures taken by the Israeli government in recent days led the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to slam the “security” measures being implemented as constituting collective punishment against Palestinians.

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