Israelis and Palestinians mourn their dead on Wednesday, including teenagers whose lives have been swept away in a new cycle of violence in the occupied West Bank.
In the latest episode of this new wave of violence, four Israelis were killed Tuesday by two Palestinian gunmen near the Jewish settlement of Eli, between Ramallah and Nablus, in the West Bank, according to the Israeli army.
Following this attack, which also injured four people, the Israeli government decided on Wednesday to speed up a settlement project in Eli. “Our response to terrorism is to strike it hard and build our country,” a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
The two assailants were shot dead on Tuesday, one at the scene of the attack, the other after fleeing.
The attack came a day after fierce clashes during a deadly Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, where soldiers encountered heavy resistance.
The Palestinian Health Ministry announced Wednesday morning that a 15-year-old girl, injured on Monday, had died of her injuries, bringing to seven, including an Islamic Jihad fighter, the number of Palestinians killed in the raid.
The girl’s body was carried by weeping classmates late in the morning in Jenin, before her burial.
On the Israeli side, almost at the same time, the funeral of a 17-year-old boy killed in the attack on Tuesday took place in the settlement of Shilo (north). A sexagenarian, also killed on Tuesday, was buried in Eli. The other two victims were buried Tuesday evening.
In Balata, a Palestinian refugee camp bordering Nablus, two young men aged 17 and 18 were killed by an explosion on Tuesday evening, according to local sources.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Fatah, the movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, presented them as “heroes” killed while preparing an explosive device to fight “against the Israeli occupation”.
After the attack in Eli, the army announced on Wednesday morning that it had arrested “three wanted people”, “for interrogation”, during an operation in the Palestinian village of Ourif where it said the soldiers came from. two assailants killed.
According to the army, the soldiers are also trying to draw up plans for the homes of the two men, with a view to their destruction.
Israel regularly destroys the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks against Israelis. The government defends the dissuasive effect of this policy but its detractors denounce a collective punishment affecting families who find themselves on the street.
Tuesday evening, in Huwara, near Nablus, a hundred Jewish settlers attacked residents and set fire to agricultural land, according to the mayor of this Palestinian city and a resident reached by AFP by telephone, thus seeming to repeat the scenario of a punitive expedition carried out in February after a Palestinian attack, which had claimed the lives of two Israelis in the same area.
On the spot, an AFP journalist saw olive groves on fire. Several dozen people were injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Other settler attacks were reported in the evening, in al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, near Eli, and in Beit Furik (north).
The northern West Bank is the scene of recurrent violence. Israeli military incursions often degenerate into deadly clashes with Palestinian residents.
Condemning “the terrorist attack against Israelis near Eli”, the United States said it was “worried about the continued violence in Israel and the West Bank in recent weeks”.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 170 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources .
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and, on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
Apart from occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. About 490,000 Israelis also live there in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.
06/21/2023 14:47:28 – Shilo (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP