The intensity of the conflict is not diminishing in the occupied West Bank. According to a statement issued by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Palestinian “terrorist attack” killed two people on Sunday, February 26. The attack occurred on a car on the main road in Huwara, near Nablus, where an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer saw Israeli soldiers deployed for search operations. “Our response to terrorism is to fight it with force and strengthen our roots in our land,” Binyamin Netanyahu said in the statement.
“Two Israelis were killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack,” reads a joint statement by Binyamin Netanyahu and his National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir. Earlier, the Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, told AFP that the two young Israelis injured in Huwara had succumbed to their injuries.
The IDF said a “terrorist [had] opened fire on an Israeli vehicle” and that soldiers then cordoned off the area for search operations. The Shomron Regional Council, which manages the Jewish settlements in this area, identified the two victims as two brothers, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, residents of the settlement of Har Bracha, close to the site of the attack, aged 22 and 20 years.
In their press release, Benyamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben Gvir announce that a ministerial committee has voted in favor of a “proposal of law opening the possibility for a court to impose the death penalty on terrorists”.
Without claiming responsibility for the attack, the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad called it a “heroic operation”.
This attack comes as a meeting opened on Sunday in Jordan between Palestinian and Israeli leaders to try to put an end to the spiral of violence observed since the beginning of the year, after the entry into office at the end of December of the government formed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (right) with far-right allies and ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups.
Orit Strouck, Minister of National Missions, called on Twitter for “the immediate return of the Israeli delegation” attending the Aqaba meeting.
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 62 Palestinians – including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors – and 11 civilians – including three minors – and one Israeli policeman, as well as a Ukrainian, according to an AFP count compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
