Two young Israelis living in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank were shot dead Sunday in an attack on their car, described as a “Palestinian terrorist attack” by the Israeli government.
The attack comes as a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli officials was held in Jordan on Sunday to try to put an end to the spiral of violence observed since the beginning of the year, after the inauguration at the end of December of the government formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right), with far-right allies and ultra-Orthodox Jewish formations.
It happened on the main road in Huwara, near Nablus in the northern West Bank, where an AFP photographer saw Israeli soldiers deployed for search operations.
Without claiming responsibility for the attack, the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad called it a “heroic operation”.
“Two Israelis have been killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack,” read a joint statement from Netanyahu and his National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “Our response to terrorism is to fight it with force and to strengthen our roots in our land”, adds the text.
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 Israeli army said that 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, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, residents of the settlement of Har Bracha, close to the site of the attack, aged respectively 22 and 20 years.
Settlers calling for revenge burned down dozens of houses in Huwara in the evening, according to the Palestinian agency Wafa.
A 37-year-old Palestinian, Sameh Aqtash, was shot dead in the evening in Zaatara, a village near Nablus, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on this information but announced that it had evacuated dozens of Palestinians from their homes threatened by fires in Huwara.
The Palestinian Red Cross said 98 people had been treated in incidents in the area, the majority for suffocation from tear gas inhalation, while Israeli emergency services reported three Israelis injured after jets of stones.
The Israeli prime minister called for calm in a video released by his office.
“I even ask you if the blood is still hot and the spirits heated not to do justice yourself but to let the security forces accomplish their mission,” said Benjamin Netanyahu.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement accusing Israel of “protecting terrorist acts perpetrated by settlers” in this area of ??the West Bank.
In their press release, MM. Netanyahu and 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”.
This proposal is very controversial in Israel, where the death penalty has only been applied once by civil justice, against the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in 1962.
Orit Strock, Minister of National Missions and figure of the settler movement, called on Twitter “for the immediate return of the Israeli delegation” participating in the Aqaba meeting.
In a statement asserting, like other Palestinian groups, its opposition to the talks in Jordan, Islamic Jihad called Huwara’s attack “a strong message to the summit of Aqaba that our resistance is active”.
French diplomacy “strongly” condemned the attack, calling “on all parties to avoid fueling this violence and contribute to de-escalation”, according to a statement.
The death of the two young Israelis comes in a context of rising violence, particularly in the northern West Bank, where the army has been increasing its operations for almost a year.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
On Wednesday, eleven Palestinians were killed in Nablus in the Israeli army’s deadliest raid in the West Bank since at least 2005.
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 eleven 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.
02/27/2023 02:26:04 – Huwara (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
