Tag: israel

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are reeling after Israeli settlers ravaged a village overnight, killing a 23-year-old man and injuring several others in the latest incident of deadly violence against Palestinians in the area.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Friday that Mahmoud Abdel Qader Sadda was fatally shot in the attack on Jit, in the northern West Bank about 10km (six miles) west of Nablus.

Dozens of masked Israeli settlers descended on the village, opening fire on residents, setting cars ablaze and destroying homes and other property, according to witnesses and video footage from the assault.

The attack came amid a surge in Israeli military and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has unfolded in the shadow of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

Nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank between the start of the Gaza war on October 7 and August 12, according to the latest figures from the United Nations humanitarian affairs office (OCHA).

Rights groups also have criticised Israel for allowing its forces as well as settlers to operate with “endemic impunity” in their attacks against Palestinians.

The assault on Jit drew widespread condemnation from Palestinians as well as foreign leaders, including those from countries that continue to provide military and diplomatic support for Israel amid the Gaza war.

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Resistance operations against Israelis, particularly in the occupied West Bank, have surged dramatically since the start of the year, Hebrew media reported on 16 August. 

According to Israeli news outlet Channel 12, hundreds of operations have been carried out since the start of 2024. Despite most of them being in the West Bank, the operations have targeted “every point in Israel.” 

Israel’s Channel 10 correspondent Noam Cohen also noted a surge in resistance operations across Israel and the occupied West Bank over the past 10 months. 

Between 7 October and the current month, 338 resistance operations were carried out against Israelis, Cohen said, adding that this marks an 82 percent surge compared to 2022 and around a nine percent jump since last year. 

Commenting on the increase in the average number of operations per month, Cohen said the average was five in 2020, 10 in 2021, and 17 in 2022. Since 7 October, it has become an average of 31 per month, the correspondent added. 

The majority of the over 300 operations since October have been in the West Bank. Ten were in occupied Jerusalem and 28 took place in the territories occupied in 1948. 

The operations have killed 28 settlers and wounded over 250.

Two Israelis were killed in a stabbing operation in Holon, near Tel Aviv, on 4 August.

An Israeli prison guard was found dead in his home in the occupied West Bank in early July. It was discovered later that month that he was killed by a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Ibrahim Mansour, who was detained by Israeli forces on 22 July. 

One soldier was killed and others injured in a stabbing operation in the Karmiel settlement on 3 July. These are just a few examples.

The surge in operations comes as there has also been a massive spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

Around 100 armed Israeli settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Jit in the occupied West Bank on 15 August, firing bullets at residents and setting homes, cars, and other property on fire. 

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Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel’s 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S. approved the sales despite growing calls for an arms embargo on Israel. “This is just a continuation of a policy that has been going on now for 10 months of the U.S. providing to Israel all the arms that it requests,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest over Gaza policy in October. “It is a dark day for American foreign policy.” We also speak with Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says it’s “incomprehensible” that the U.S. keeps supplying Israel with weapons. “There should be no more arms going into that place before there is a ceasefire.”

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Today’s evacuation orders come a few days after the United Nations (UN) announced that 84 percent of the population in Gaza is under evacuation orders by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army issued new evacuation orders on Friday to Palestinians in various areas previously classified as “humanitarian safe zones” in central and southern Gaza.

The evacuation warnings came in the form of text messages sent to residents and displaced Palestinians alike along with flyers dropped in the northern area of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, and in neighborhoods in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, according to Reuters news agency.

The Israeli army claimed that these areas were used by Hamas “as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel,” Reuters said.

Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure and population as command centers for its operations.

The Palestinian group, however, has always denied operating from civilian facilities.

In 2014, following a deadly Israeli war on the Strip, Amnesty International investigated Israeli claims and reported that no evidence was found that the Palestinian group intentionally used civilians as shields.

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The Israeli government on 14 August officially approved municipal boundaries for a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish supremacist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of occupied Jerusalem.

“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements. We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission, and I will continue it as much as I can,” the Israeli official, who lives in an illegal settlement, said via social media.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have planning permission or not.

The Israeli Civil Administration published a blue line – a land survey process in which the administration ensures which lands are private and which are not – of 602 dunams (3.7 kilometers) for the establishment of the new Nahal Heletz settlement.
According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the intended area of the new settlement was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. “Smotrich continues to promote de facto annexation, disregarding the UNESCO Convention that Israel is a signatory to, and we will all pay the price,” the organization said in a statement.

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