One dead as Israeli settlers attack Palestinian villages

Israeli settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns in the West Bank on Wednesday, killing at least one person and torching buildings and cars in retaliation for the alleged killing by Hamas of four Israelis near a settlement the day before, officials said.

In Turmus Ayya, a prosperous town near Ramallah, footage showed cars ablaze with thick clouds of black smoke swirling above and people carrying an injured person to an ambulance.

“They tried to enter the courtyard, they set the cars on fire, they started shooting towards the house using live bullets and stones and they broke the balconies,” said Noman Shalab, a resident of Turmus Ayya.

The Israeli military said troops had entered Turmus Ayya to put out fires and prevent clashes and it said the Israeli civilians had left the town.

“We will not accept any provocations to the police or the security forces in these places or anywhere else,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

One Palestinian was shot dead during the attack while at least one other was critically injured, Palestinian health officials said.

The latest round of violence underlined the volatility of the Israeli-occupied territory, where for over a year the military has been conducting regular sweeps leading to repeated clashes with Palestinian freedom fighters.

Hours before the overnight attacks, two gunmen fired on a roadside restaurant and petrol station close to the settlement of Eli, killing four Israelis in an attack Hamas said was a response to a major Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday.

Residents of a number of other Palestinian towns reported settler attacks after the killings and senior ministers in Netanyahu’s government called for a full-scale military operation across the West Bank.

Yaqoub Oweis, chairman of the village council of Al-Lubban Al-Sharqeya near Ramallah, said Israeli soldiers and police stood by as a large group of settlers burned a petrol station, orchards, a cement factory and dozens of cars.

“The attack was unprecedented and abnormal,” he said. “There was heavy gunfire but we couldn’t distinguish whether it came from settlers or the soldiers because of the darkness.”

‘We need to flatten buildings’

Both Egypt and Jordan, which have diplomatic relations with Israel, condemned the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Even as the settler attacks took place, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, from one of the hard-right parties in Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition, led calls for tougher action against Palestinians.

“We need a military operation, we need to flatten buildings, we need targeted killings,” he told parliament on Wednesday. “That’s how you act against terrorism.”

Some other ministers played down the demand for additional measures. “There’s no need for any new decisions, only adaptation of existing ones,” Energy Minister Israel Katz, a member of the government’s Security Cabinet, told Army Radio.

Netanyahu’s office said Israel planned to add 1,000 new homes to the Eli settlement, defying international calls for a halt to new settlement projects.

Palestinians have complained repeatedly of attacks by settlers in the West Bank, an issue that has also drawn mounting international concern.

There has been no sign of any new effort to find a political solution since US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, aimed at establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, collapsed in 2014.

Netanyahu’s government includes members who rule out a Palestinian state while Hamas, which advocates armed defiance against Israel, has been steadily expanding its operations in the West Bank.

Monday’s military arrest raid in Jenin, the apparent trigger for the killing of the four Israelis, touched off hours of fighting with Palestinians. Seven Palestinians died, more than 90 were wounded and seven Israeli personnel were wounded.

So far this year, 174 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. At the same time, 24 Israelis and one foreigner have been killed in alleged attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank, around Jerusalem and in some Israeli cities.

from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/3YRZ2sX