Palestinians awoke July 3 to the news of a sudden and wide-scale arrest campaign launched by the Palestinian security apparatus against hundreds of Hamas members and cadres in the West Bank. The campaign has been ongoing for around two weeks as of this writing and has been targeting the cities of Tulkarm, Salfit, Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus.

Hamas published July 14 a list of the names of 250 Hamas members who have been detained in Palestinian prisons since the beginning of the arrest campaign.

Hamas spokesperson Hussam Badran told Al-Monitor, “This is the largest security campaign carried out by the Palestinian Authority [PA] against Hamas since 2007. It is one of the attempts to put an end to the armed resistance’s growing activity against Israel, which announced [to Israel] that Hamas is behind the majority of the armed operations that occurred in the West Bank during the last few weeks.”

The PA’s campaign against Hamas began after the West Bank witnessed a series of armed Palestinian attacks against Israelis in June — on June 29 north of Ramallah, June 27 in the central West Bank, June 21 in Jerusalem and June 19 west of Ramallah.