MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / July 7, 2023
Local media say Abdel-Jawad Saleh was shot dead during a protest against settlement expansion.
Israeli forces have shot and killed a Palestinian man near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
The Palestinian health ministry said in a brief statement on Friday afternoon that a man with serious wounds in the chest arrived at the Istishari Arab Hospital from Umm Safa village north of Ramallah and was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
He was identified by Palestinian media as Abdel-Jawad Saleh.
A large presence of Israeli forces was spotted in Umm Safa earlier on Friday, local media said.
Residents of the village had gathered to join a rally against the establishment of a new Jewish settlement outpost near the southern entrance to the village last month.
Protected by the army, Jewish settlers attacked the Palestinian protesters with sticks and stones, wounding some, according to the news outlet Arab48.
Muhammad Bahr, a member of the Umm Safa’s village council, told WAFA news agency that Israeli soldiers shot and killed Saleh while he was in the northern area of the village.
Umm Safa, along with other villages near Ramallah and Nablus, has come under violent settler mob attacks in recent weeks that left at least one Palestinian killed.
Palestinians hold weekly rallies in the West Bank to denounce settlements and the occupation.
Israeli soldiers and settlers often attack them to disperse their protests, leading to the wounding and killing of Palestinians.
Nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers live in more than 250 Jewish settlements and outposts across the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.
Saleh’s killing comes after Israeli troops raided Nablus earlier on Friday morning and killed two Palestinians, Khairy Shaheen and Hamza Moayed Muhammad Maqboul.
Since Monday, Israeli forces have killed 18 Palestinians in one of the most violent weeks in the West Bank in months.
According to a Middle East Eye tally, 192 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire this year, including 33 children – at a rate of more than one fatality per day.
At least 157 people died in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the remaining 36 were killed in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Palestinians have killed 25 Israelis in the same period, including six children.
