Wednesday, June 21 was marked by new violence in the West Bank: three Palestinians presented by the Israeli army as members of a “terrorist cell” were killed on Wednesday, June 21 in the evening by a drone strike.
The car they were traveling in was targeted after they “opened fire” in the Jenin area (northern West Bank), according to an IDF statement. According to Kamal Abu Al-Roub, deputy governor of Jenin, the three men were from the Jenin refugee camp, the scene of a deadly raid by the Israeli army on Monday, and their car was hit by “missiles”. .
This is the first such action by the Israeli army in the West Bank since August 2006, a Palestinian intelligence source said. Calling the development a “dangerous escalation”, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed that this “crime” would “not go unpunished”. Palestinian Islamic Jihad called the three dead ‘heroic martyrs’
Earlier, a Palestinian was killed in Turmusayya, a town between Ramallah and Nablus attacked in the afternoon by dozens of Israelis. Arrived after the attack, journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw houses burned and injured people evacuated by ambulance.
The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, said in a statement that Israelis had “burned vehicles and properties belonging to Palestinians” and that its soldiers had intervened in Turmusayya “to put out the fires” and “to prevent clashes “.
“We will not accept any commotion”
“The State of Israel is a rule of law [and] all citizens are bound to obey the law,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video after the events. “We will not accept any unrest” in the West Bank. Israeli police said they were “the target of violence from dozens of Palestinians” in Turmusayya and that an officer “fired on a rioter”. The Palestinian health ministry reported one dead, hit by a bullet in the chest.
“I came out and saw settlers approaching, a group of masked men trying to throw stones at our house,” Mohammed Abdallah, an 18-year-old Palestinian-American visiting Turmusayya, told AFP. , where many Palestinian-Americans reside. “They were armed (…) we are all scared,” he added.
The violence came shortly after the funeral in Shilo, a settlement adjoining Turmusayya, of a 17-year-old Israeli man who died Tuesday in an attack in which four Israelis were killed near the Eli settlement. The two Palestinian attackers were shot dead.
A thousand new homes in the colony
On Wednesday evening, another attack by hundreds of Israelis was reported against the village of Ourif, where the two men were from. According to Abdelhakim Shehada, mayor of the village, the residents faced them with stones and pushed them back. “The situation is calm now and the Israeli army is here,” he told AFP by phone.
In response to Eli’s attack, the Israeli government on Wednesday decided to speed up a project to build 1,000 homes in the settlement. “Our response to terrorism is to strike it hard and build our country,” Netanyahu said in a statement, ignoring repeated calls from the United Nations (UN) to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Jordan condemned “attacks by Israeli settlers on several villages” as well as the “Israeli government’s announcement” to build 1,000 new homes.
America ‘troubled’
The attack near Eli came a day after a deadly Israeli army raid in Jenin, where soldiers met heavy resistance on Monday. According to the Palestinian health ministry, Sadil Naghnaghiya, a 15-year-old girl who was injured on Monday, succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday, bringing the number of Palestinians killed in the raid to seven.
The United States on Wednesday expressed “deep concern” over the outbreak of violence in the West Bank, and shared “disturbing reports of extremist violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians”.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 174 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.