ISRAEL launched a massive clampdown in the occupied West Bank yesterday, arresting 100 people in 24 hours, suppressing peaceful demonstrations and allegedly firing on Palestinian ambulances.

Ramallah was reported to be in “lockdown” as Israel’s occupying army launched a hunt for a man who shot two of its soldiers dead outside an illegal settlement on Thursday.

Those arrested included at least 70 members of the Islamist group Hamas, including some of its elected MPs. 

“Whoever attacks us and whoever tries to attack us will pay with his life,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared. He has suggested accelerating approval of new illegal settlements on Palestinian land in revenge for Thursday’s attack.

The Israeli Defence Forces suppressed the peaceful weekly Bilin march against the occupation, laying into demonstrators with tear gas and stun grenades. Bilin has held the demonstration every Friday for 12 years.

There was a spike in settler violence, with settlers blockading roads between Hebron and Palestinian villages and vandalising cars belonging to Palestinians, including by pelting an ambulance taking a patient to a Hebron hospital with rocks so it was forced to turn back.

Soldiers closed roads in Nablus to allow a settler march that trashed Palestinian vehicles.

The Red Crescent said one of its ambulances was fired on by a soldier at a checkpoint near al-Bireh, where earlier in the day an Israeli soldier was left unconscious after being hit over the head with a rock by an assailant who had not been captured when the Morning Star went to press.