Two Palestinians were killed in separate violent clashes with Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian authorities said, one during an Israeli military arrest raid in the north of the territory and another after stabbing and wounding an Israeli civilian in a southern settlement.
Wednesday’s violence was the latest in a wave of attacks in the West Bank, following the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory in 18 years.
During a pre-dawn Israeli military raid on the Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus, Israeli forces shot 21-year-old Ahmed Abu Junaid in the head and died several hours later, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
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The Israeli army reported a shootout between Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces in the Balata refugee camp, acknowledging that a Palestinian was hit by Israeli fire. Palestinian health officials said Israeli special forces surrounded a house in the congested camp during the arrest operation and fired live ammunition, tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of youths.
This is a locator map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Two Palestinians were killed in two separate incidents in the occupied West Bank.
(AP Photo)
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed militia affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority, claimed Abu Junaid as a fighter. Footage of him brandishing a rifle was widely shared on social media.
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Later on Wednesday, a Palestinian assailant stabbed a 30-year-old Israeli man in a settlement in the southern West Bank before being shot dead by an Israeli bystander, Israeli paramedics said. The Israeli victim was hospitalized for moderate injuries but remains fully conscious, authorities said. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the assailant as Sanad Samamreh from the village of al-Dhahiriya, in southern Palestine.
The attack took place at the Havat Yehuda outpost, an illegal settlement near the city of Hebron, a hotspot. Israel has built dozens of Jewish settlements that house some 500,000 Israelis who live alongside some 2.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians and most of the international community view the settlements as a violation of international law.
Israeli military incursions have increased in the West Bank since last March, when the army began an operation to stem a wave of Palestinian attacks inside Israel last spring that killed 19 Israelis. At least 146 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in 2022 in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Last year’s death toll was the highest since 2004, during a wave of intense violence known as the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
The Israeli army says that most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But young people who threw stones in protest against the incursions and others who did not participate in the clashes have also been killed.
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Israel says the raids are aimed at dismantling militant networks and thwarting future attacks. Palestinians see them as a further entrenchment of Israel’s 55-year indefinite occupation of the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East war and the Palestinians seek those territories for a future state.
