Ramallah/Tel Aviv, Aug 21. (dpa/GNA) – Fresh violence occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, with the Israeli military saying it killed a Palestinian who tried to attack an Israeli soldier with a knife.
According to Palestinian reports, Israeli forces stormed the man’s home. Palestinian media further reported that a 14-year-old boy had been wounded by Israeli gunfire, during an Israeli operation in the town of Sababda, in the north of the West Bank.
The Israeli military said in response to a request that it was looking into the matter. Regarding the first incident, the Israeli army said soldiers were operating in the city of Jenin, which is regarded as a militant Palestinian stronghold. Soldiers opened fire on the suspected attacker, it said. There were no injuries on the Israeli side.
According to Palestinian media, the man who was killed resisted Israeli forces, as they stormed his home, and was shot in the process.
Several media outlets reported that the man was the father of a Palestinian who killed three people, in an attack in Tel Aviv in April 2022. The father had reportedly praised his son for the attack at the time.
Palestinian media also reported fresh settler violence in the southern West Bank. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, two Palestinians were shot and wounded by Israeli settlers in a town north of the city of Hebron. One of the two was reported to be in a life-threatening condition.
The radical settlers also set a house on fire, according to WAFA. The Israeli army said in response to a request that it was looking into the report. WAFA reported five further injuries south of Hebron, after settlers threw stones at Palestinian homes.
In the village of Kusra, also in the northern West Bank, radical Israeli settlers are reportedly continuing to besiege the homes of several Palestinian residents.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing village elder Abdul Asim al-Wadi, reported that people were still unable to leave their homes. Food and some medicines were running short, the report said. A relative of the residents recently said they were staying in their homes for fear that settlers might otherwise occupy them.
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, recently called the settlers in Kusra “Israeli terrorists.”
The situation in the occupied West Bank has deteriorated further, since the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023 and the Gaza war it triggered.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, more than 1,105 Palestinians have since been killed in the West Bank, during Israeli military operations, armed clashes or their own attacks.
Violence by radical Israeli settlers against Palestinians has also increased sharply. The Israeli military has repeatedly been accused of not acting decisively enough against such attacks.
Unrest in the West Bank has been further fuelled by a highly controversial Israeli settlement project. Israel published a tender this week for the building of more than 1,200 housing units for the project, specifically in the so-called E1 area between East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement.
Construction in the area would effectively split the West Bank into a northern and a southern part, making the creation of a contiguous territory for a future Palestinian state more difficult or even impossible.
GNA