On Wednesday, a Palestinian was killed in a village attacked by dozens of Israelis in the northern occupied West Bank. It was the latest death in a new outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
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According to local residents, around 200 Israelis set fire to agricultural land and dozens of cars in Turmusayya, a city between Ramallah and Nablus, in the afternoon.
“The settlers shot at us and when the police and army arrived they fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters,” Awad Abou Samra told AFP. At the scene, AFP journalists saw burnt houses and injured people who were evacuated by ambulance.
The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, said in a statement that Israelis had “burned Palestinians’ vehicles and property” and that their soldiers had intervened in Turmusayya “to put out the fires” and “prevent clashes.” . .
“There are days when we need to remember the obvious: the State of Israel is a state governed by the rule of law (and) all citizens are obliged to obey the law,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video following the events, “that we will.” Accept “no unrest” in the West Bank.
Israeli police said they were “the target of violence by dozens of Palestinians” in Turmusayya and one officer “shot at a rioter.” The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported one death from a bullet in the chest.
“fear”
“I came out and saw settlers coming towards us, 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 live.
“They were armed (…) We don’t know if it’s going to happen again tonight, we’re all scared,” he added.
The violence came shortly after the funeral of a 17-year-old Israeli in Shilo, a settlement adjacent to Turmusayya, who was killed in a deadly attack on four Israelis near the settlement of Eli on Tuesday. The two Palestinian attackers were shot dead.
Another attack by Israeli soldiers on the village of Ourif, where the two men were from, was reported Wednesday evening. According to Abdelhakim Shehada, the village mayor, the residents threw stones at them 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 houses in the settlement.
“Our response to terrorism is to hit hard and build our country,” Netanyahu said in a statement, ignoring repeated calls by the UN to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Jordan “strongly condemned the attacks by Israeli settlers on several villages” and “the Israeli government’s announcement” that it would build 1,000 new housing units.
The Troubled United States
The attack near the settlement of Eli came the day after a deadly IDF raid in Jenin (north of the West Bank) by the Israeli army on Monday, where the soldiers met strong resistance.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 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, which condemned “the terrorist attack on Israelis near Eli” on Tuesday, on Wednesday expressed its “deep concern” over the outbreak of violence in the West Bank and said it was also concerned about the attack on the village of Turmusayya.
At least 171 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the beginning of the year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These statistics include combatants and civilians, including minors, on the Palestinian side and mostly civilians, including minors, on the Israeli side, as well as three members of the Arab minority.