The Defense Forces in Israel are assisting in the rescue of a soldier killed in a shooting attack at the Shuafat checkpoint
“Overnight, an IDF soldier was killed as a result of being critically injured by a shooting attack at the Shu’afat checkpoint,” the army said in the statement. “The solider was evacuated to a hospital for further medical treatment, where she was declared dead. We express our heartfelt condolences to the family.”
A suspect fired at the security forces at the Shuafat crossing, in addition to a shot being fired from a passing vehicle. The Border Guard is looking for suspects.
The Israeli emergency services said a male was in serious condition and another female was in mild condition after they attended to him.
The checkpoint is located near the Shuafat Refugee Camp, an area that is considered by most of the international community to be.
In the statement, the Prime Minister said many forces were deployed to protect the citizens of Israel. Our hearts tonight are with the victims and their families. Terror will not defeat us, we are strong, even on this difficult evening.”
A Palestinian student killed in the early hours of the morning rush hour: Israeli security forces and militant groups are responsible for two attacks last year in the occupied West Bank
The youngest was 14-year-old Adel Ibrahim Daoud, shot in the head near the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
During IDF operational activity soldiers spotted a suspect who tossed Molotov cocktails at them near Qalqilya, the Israel Defense Force said when asked about Daoud’s death. The soldiers fired their guns at the other soldiers. A hit was identified. The incident is being reviewed.
The Israeli steps may not be effective. The attackers in the Saturday and Sunday shooting were not part of militant groups and acted on their own.
A total of 55 Palestinians have been killed in the east Jerusalem and the West Bank this year, a pace that could be greater than last year’s toll. According to the B’ Tselism organization, last year was the most violent in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since 2004.
The IDF said forces were in the Jenin refugee camp to arrest an “Islamic Jihad operative” who it claims was “involved in terrorist activities, planning and carrying out shooting attacks towards IDF soldiers in the area.”
The operation came at a time when the situation in the West Bank has been rapidly deteriorating. One act of violence is typically responded to by another, accelerating a cycle of bloodshed. The Palestinians said this was the most dangerous start to a year since 2000. Sixty-four Palestinians and 13 Israelis have been killed in the last two months.
Israel says the raids are intended to disrupt militant networks and prevent future attacks. The Palestinians say Israel is further entrenching its 55-year open-ended occupation of lands they want for a future state, as well as undermine their own security forces.
The mounting violence in the occupied West Bank is making people fearful and angry. It is crucial to reduce tensions immediately to open the space for crucial initiatives aimed at establishing a viable political horizon,” Wennesland said.
Two explosions went off near bus stops during the morning rush hour, killing a Canadian-Israeli teenager and injuring at least 18 others in what police said were suspected attacks by Palestinians.
The victim was identified as Aryeh Shechopek, a teenager who was heading to a Jewish seminary when the blast went off, according to a notice announcing his death. Shechopek was also a Canadian citizen, according to Canada’s Ambassador to Israel Lisa Stadelbauer. The reports differed over Shechopek’s age.
Less than two months after Netanyahu’s new hard-line government took office, the fighting is at a sensitive time. The government is dominated by ultranationalists who have pushed for tougher action against Palestinian militants. Israeli media have quoted top security officials as expressing concern that this could lead to even more violence.
The developments took place as former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding coalition talks after national elections and is likely to return to power as head of what’s expected to be Israel’s most right-wing government ever.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist lawmaker who has called for the death penalty for Palestinian attackers and who is set to become the minister in charge of police under Netanyahu, said the attack meant Israel needed to take a tougher stance on Palestinian violence.
“We must exact a price from terror,” he said at the scene of the first explosion. “We must return to be in control of Israel, to restore deterrence against terror.”
Police who were searching for the attackers found that bombs were placed in the two sites. The first explosion went off near a main highway leading out of the city, causing police to close part of the highway. Video from shortly after the initial blast showed debris strewn along the sidewalk as the wail of ambulances blared. The bus looked like it had been hit by a bomb.
Medic Yosef Haim Gabay told Israeli Army Radio that the first blast was ” crazy” and that he was at the scene. “I saw people with wounds bleeding all over the place.”
Bombing attacks have become rare since the end of the Palestinian uprising in the late 1990s.
Hamas praised the perpetrators of the attacks but stopped short of saying it was responsible.
Israel said that in response to the blasts, it was closing two West Bank crossings to Palestinians near the West Bank city of Jenin, a militant stronghold.
An Israeli teen’s death and the fate of the Judea-Jordah area as a protest against the occupation of Jerusalem
It was terrible. It was something that was inhumane,” Husam Ferro, the teen’s father, told Israeli news site YNet. I couldn’t do anything because he was dead and they took him in front of my eyes.
The leader of the Druze community told YNet talks were going on over the body’s return to the family. Palestinian militants have in the past carried out kidnappings to seek concessions from Israel. Lapid said the militants would “pay a heavy price” if the body was not returned.
The Israeli people have been killed in a number of attacks by Palestinians this year, including seven in a shooting near a synagogue, three in a car ramming attack, and a border police officer who was stabbed by a teenager.
The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Israel considers the whole city to be its undivided capital, despite the fact that east Jerusalem is not internationally recognized.
Jana’s uncle, Majed Zakarneh, told CNN on Monday that his niece “was shot with four bullets, two to her face, one to her neck, and one to her shoulder.”
“Twenty minutes after the soldiers left the neighborhood, her father went to look for her … He found her lying on the floor with a face full of blood,” Zakarneh said.
If it’s true that her death was caused by the IDF, Israeli Defense Minister Bentz said he wanted to express “sorrow for her death” and any deaths of people who weren’t involved in terrorism.
U.S.-based talks on the “violation of the fundamental human rights” in the West Bank and Gaza” after Jana’s killing
A general strike was declared in Jenin on Monday following Jana’s killing, WAFA said, adding that “hundreds of people” took to the streets to protest “ongoing Israeli aggression”.
In a statement on Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called on the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, “to investigate the crimes of the occupation and put Israel on the blacklist.” Gamba is in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Associated Press says 62 Palestinians — about half identified as militants — and 14 Israelis have been killed since the start of the year. The UN Security Council plans to discuss the violence today and they have called on both sides to restore calm. A statement of general steps aimed at reducing the violence was produced by talks that were led by the U.S.
On Thursday, a 16-year-old boy died after he was shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah, according to a separate statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health last week.
“Al-Rimawi, 16-years-old, was injured by two bullets from the back. The first exited from his chest and the second exited from the abdomen,” that statement said.
The experience of mental torture in the West Bank: How much did I learn from Israel? How I was able to tell my family when I arrived in Nablus
It was clear to me that it wasn’t possible for me to measure the damage caused by Israel’s lockdown. The unrelenting buzzing sound of Israel’s military surveillance drones, which patrolled Nablus 24/7 for weeks, for example — many people referred to it as a form of psychological torture. How are I able to measure that? For one focus group, a public health faculty member arrived 90 minutes late, explaining that the road she tried to take to enter the city was blocked by a checkpoint, so she had to go a different way, recounting the experience as casually as someone might describe mistakenly putting on two mismatched socks. What does it say about a population’s psyche when events like these are normalized?
My family hails from the West Bank so I wanted to convey the reality of the situation for Palestinians as someone committed to justice and equity. I was born in Nablus to a woman from a nearby village and a man from a Palestinian town that was within Israel’s borders when it was established in 1948. Before moving to the United States, my father taught journalism and political science in Nablus. I’m now a professor myself, because I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I’m not a political scientist as my dad was; I’m a scholar of public health. Health and politics are intertwined in any setting. I was reminded of how deep that connection is, in Nablus.
That context has remained, for the most part, much the same for the past 50 years, with periods punctuated by slightly more freedom for Palestinians and other periods that featured heavy restriction and violence. I visited family in the West Bank every summer as a child and for most of my adult life. I remember the long, winding checkpoint lines, with hostile Israeli soldiers looking through our documents. We were forced to use candles and lanterns during curfews because the electricity was not available. I remember that while travelling to Tel Aviv from the West Bank, I had to switch taxis at the airport as Palestinian taxis weren’t allowed to pick us up. Even though I hold a Palestinian passport and am a country of residence, I can not use the airport without permission from the Israeli government. Israel bombed the last Palestinian airport, so we go through Jordan to get to and from the West Bank. (A lucky few have recently been able to fly out of an airport in southern Israel.)
The last night before I was scheduled to leave, Israeli military forces raided the old city of Nablus, killing five Palestinians and injuring at least a dozen more. For me, it was a sleepless night, knowing what was happening just minutes away.
The next day, after many panicked calls with a taxi company, which assured me it could get me out of the city, I left. Unlike Palestinians forced to live under these conditions every day, my time there had an end date. I have left to examine and analyze my data.
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians, including plans to beef up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, in response to a pair of shooting attacks that killed seven Israelis and wounded five others.
The announcement cast a cloud over a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and threatened to further raise tensions following one of the bloodiest months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years.
Netanyahu’s office said the Security Cabinet sealed off the attacker’s home before it was demolished. It will also work to make it easier for Israelis to obtain gun licenses, and it plans to step up efforts to collect illegal weapons.
There was no immediate response from Washington. The Biden administration, which condemned the shooting, opposes settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank — lands sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when there are talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Members of Netanyahu’s government, a group of religious and ultranationalists, could put pressure on the Prime Minister to take even tougher action. Such steps could risk triggering more violence and potentially drag in the Hamas militant group in Gaza.
“If it is possible to put this genie back into the bottle, it will need the reinforcement and proper deployment of forces to manage the crisis without being directed by calls for revenge,” wrote Amos Harel, the defense affairs commentator.
Israeli is moving to strengthen settlements after shooting attacks on a synagogue in east Jerusalem, killing four people and wounding a teen
The shooting occurred outside the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath, with seven Israelis dead and three wounded before the suspect was killed by police. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in 15 years.
Authorities published the names of four of the victims. Asher Natan and his parents, Eli and Natali Mizrahi, as well as the couple’s son and wife, Rafael Ben Eliyahu were included. Funerals for some victims were scheduled Saturday night.
Mourners lit memorial candles near the synagogue on Saturday evening, and in a sign of the charged atmosphere, a crowd assaulted an Israeli TV crew that came to the area, chanting “leftists go home.”
When shots were fired outside on Friday night, Natali Mizrahi and her father were celebrating the Sabbath with her husband and niece.
“While eating, she and her husband wanted to help the injured, and went out to treat them, and both of them were shot,” said Sakovich in a statement released by the hospital.
42 people, including family members of the shooter, were arrested by the Israeli police after the shooting in east Jerusalem.
As police rushed to the scene, two passers-by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-to-strengthen-settlements-after-shooting-attacks
The Shooting of a Palestinian Gunman in the East Jerusalem Neighborhood: Israeli Counterattacks on Israel’s Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir
It’s expected that he will arrive in Israel on Monday. The Biden administration condemns Friday night’s shooting and called for calm, but they don’t know how to promote these goals.
Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem hold permanent residency status, allowing them to work and move freely throughout Israel, but they suffer from subpar public services and are not allowed to vote in national elections.
Israel’s new firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.
Speaking to reporters at a hospital where victims were being treated, Ben-Gvir said he wanted the home of the gunman in Friday’s attack to be sealed off immediately as a punitive measure and lashed out at Israel’s attorney general for delaying his order.
Overhauling Israel’s justice system, including the attorney general’s office, has been at the top of the agenda of the new government, which says unelected judges and jurists have overwhelming powers.
The divisive issue helped fuel weekly protests by Israelis who say the sweeping proposed changes would weaken the Supreme Court and undermine democracy.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv Saturday evening for a new protest. Some banners said Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir were a threat to world peace.
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank agreed to stop security coordination with Israel in protest of the Jenin raid.
Abbas’ office said the Palestinians would “stress the need to stop all Israeli unilateral actions.” An Israeli official said the meeting was requested by an American and was supposed to ease tensions before the holiest time of the year.
The Palestinian rammed a car into the police and the other people were killed. This comes two weeks after a spike in attacks between Palestinians and Israelis.
An off-duty policeman shot and killed a driver. The Israeli media said he was from the Palestinian neighborhood Issawiyeh in East Jerusalem.
The Israeli military said it was attempting to arrest three suspected militant, adding that it surrounded their apartment building and asked them to surrender. One of the men tried to escape the building but was shot at by the two other men, who were also killed, the IDF said.
The names of at least two suspects released by the Israeli Defence Force appeared to correspond with those of dead people released by the Palestinian health ministry. The IDF said one was shot while fleeing and the other two were killed in an exchange of fire with the military.
IDF raids into the West Bank usually occur overnight; the last time the military conducted a daylight operation, they said it was because of an immediate threat.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the group, said that the resistance in Gaza was watching the crimes being committed against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The raid, which reduced a building to rubble and left a series of shops riddled with bullets, was one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a year of fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. There were 10 people who were killed and more than 100 wounded in the incident.
The Israeli military said it entered the city to arrest three wanted Palestinians in the past. It said it tracked down the men in a hideout.
The Israeli-Israeli clash in Nablus: a gunfire raid on a Palestinian militant group and its consequences for the peace process
People stared at the rubble of a old home in the Old City of Nablus. Shops were covered with bullets at the other end. Parked cars were crushed. Blood stained the cement ruins. Furniture from the destroyed home was scattered among mounds of debris.
Two young men were shown running down a street in a video posted on the internet. One’s hat is flying off his head as they both fall to the ground. Both of the bodies had not been cut down.
The group has battled Israel to four wars since seizing control of Gaza in 2007, and Israeli officials have expressed concerns about rising tensions ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in March.
The Israeli military said on its verified account that the operation targeted a Palestinian militant group called the Lion’s Den which it said was planning to carry out more violence against Israelis.
The officials from the Palestinian Authority acknowledged that there was a raid and that some people were killed. But they also say others, including a 16-year-old boy and a 72-year-old man, are among the dead.
Ned Price said that the U.S. recognizes Israel’s security concerns, but is very concerned about the large number of casualties and the loss of civilians in Nablus.
News service images from the scene show that in addition to gunfire from the main clash, locals pelted military vehicles with rocks and fruit, as fires raged in the street.
Palestinians, Israelis and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank: A high-level meeting of the Jordanian government, Israel, and Egypt
JERUSALEM — The Jordanian government on Sunday announced that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to de-escalate tensions, shortly after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in a shooting in the occupied West Bank.
The status quo at a Jerusalem holy site will be preserved, and Israel will suspend new construction in the West Bank for four to six months. It also said both sides agreed to support “confidence-building steps” and to meet again next month in Egypt.
The statement marked a small sign of progress, but many questions remained. The two Israeli brothers were killed by a Palestinian in the northern West Bank.
An Israeli ministerial committee also gave initial approval to a proposal that would impose the death penalty on Palestinian militants involved in deadly attacks. The measure was sent to the legislature for further discussion.
Itamar Ben Gvir is Israel’s far-right national security minister and the leader of the West Bank settlers.
The leader of the settler group called for the destruction of the city of terror and the instigators without mercy with tanks and helicopters.
In the wake of that shooting, Israel approved construction of over 7,000 new homes in West Bank settlements. It was not clear whether that order was affected by the freeze announced by Jordan.
The presence of top officials at the meeting, as well as delegations from Egypt, Jordan and the United States, underscored the severity of the crisis. In a time of rising tensions and after the Palestinians stopped security coordination with Israel over the violence, it was a rare high-level meeting between the sides.
Palestinians who oppose any official engagement with Israel said they would protest the meeting, while Hamas criticized the meeting. It said Sunday’s shooting was a natural reaction to the actions of the Israelis in the West Bank.
A Connecticut native has been identified as the person shot to death Monday by a suspected Palestinian gunman in the Israeli occupied West Bank, according to the Israeli foreign ministry. His death is the latest in a wave of violence that has claimed Israeli and Palestinian lives.
Israeli officials say Ganeles was killed when a gunman opened fire on several motorists. The attack took place a day after the murders of the two Israeli brothers.
After that attack Sunday, hundreds of Jewish settlers went on a deadly riot and arson rampage in a nearby Palestinian town where Palestinian Sameh Aqtash was shot and killed.
His brother, Abdul Monem Aqtash, told NPR that Aqtash had recently returned from Turkey where he was volunteering to assist victims of the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria Feb. 6. He said Aqtash was a blacksmith and was standing outside his shop when the rioters approached and he was killed.
The Times obtained security camera footage, witness video and testimony from multiple locations in Nablus, and reviewed posts and live streams from social media that captured the operation to establish where and when the raid and ensuing lethal action played out.