MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / July 7, 2023
The number of Palestinians killed this week by Israel, rises to 15, making it one of the deadliest weeks in months for Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinians on Friday morning and three others were wounded in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
The Palestinian Red Crescent confirmed that the two Palestinians killed were 34-year-old Khairy Shaheen, and 32-year-old Hamza Moayed Muhammad Maqboul.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said Israeli troops had cordoned off a house where the two Palestinians were and that they had been “executed”. It reported that clashes with residents later broke out.
Israeli forces raided the old city of Nablus surrounding a house, following which armed clashes broke out.
The latest killings brings the number of Palestinians killed this week to 15, following a large-scale Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank.
On Thursday an Israeli soldier was killed in the West Bank near the illegal settlement of Kedumim, making him the second soldier killed this week.
The shooter was a 19-year-old Palestinian who opened fire and fled on foot. Israeli forces later gave chase and shot him dead.
Initially, Israel claimed that the soldier was a settler before later revealing his identity.
Jenin devastation
The latest Palestinian deaths come days after Israel’s large-scale military raid on Jenin, which resulted in the killing of 12 Palestinians and displaced over 4,000 people from their homes.
Hundreds of armed Israeli soldiers and military vehicles stormed the camp and adjacent areas in the early hours of Monday this week, under heavy cover from helicopters.
The Jenin refugee camp was left in ruins following the offensive, with infrastructure and buildings heavily damaged, leaving thousands of people without access to basic services.
More than 800 homes have been damaged or destroyed in the two-day Israeli assault
Many parts of the Jenin camp have been reduced to rubble, with hospitals and places of worship also damaged in the attacks.
Eyewitnesses told Middle East Eye that the attacks resembled the aftermath of an earthquake.
Following the Israeli assault on the camp, a Palestinian drove a pickup truck into pedestrians in Tel Aviv before carrying out a stabbing attack, wounding eight people.
The Jenin camp is home to almost 14,000 refugees, including many who were expelled from their homeland in 1948 and their descendants.
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Israeli forces kill two Palestinian militants in West Bank raid
AFP / July 7, 2023
Nablus – Palestinian Health Ministry says ‘two martyrs’, Khairi Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Maqbul, 32, were killed in Nablus.
Israeli forces have killed two Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank during a raid on the northern city of Nablus, Israeli and Palestinian officials have said.
The Palestinian health ministry announced “two martyrs and three injured as a result of the occupation aggression on Nablus”.
The Israeli army said there had been no injuries among its forces. It said it had entered Nablus to arrest two individuals over a shooting at police earlier this month in a West Bank Jewish settlement that resulted in no casualties.
The Palestinian health ministry in a statement identified the two dead as Khairi Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Maqbul, 32, who the army said “were killed following an exchange of fire with security forces”.
Witnesses told Agence France-Presse that Israeli troops entered Nablus on Friday morning and surrounded a house in the Old City, a stronghold of armed Palestinian groups, before calling on those inside to turn themselves in.
The Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, the armed wing of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed Shaheen and Maqbul as its members.
Friday’s raid came amid a rising tide of violence in the region.
On Thursday, an Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian attacker near Nablus. The Israeli army said the assailant had been shot, but his condition remained unclear. The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed the shooting, calling it a reaction to an Israeli raid on a Jenin refugee camp.
Israel launched its raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Monday, its largest operation in years in the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967. Twelve Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed during the large-scale raid, which lasted more than 48 hours and ended on Wednesday.
The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, on Thursday told reporters in New York “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces”. Israel has “legitimate concerns over its security”, he said, “but escalation is not the answer. It simply bolsters radicalisation and leads to a deepening cycle of violence and bloodshed.”
Violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year has killed at least 192 Palestinians, 27 Israelis, one Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides. They include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians and three members of the Arab minority.
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Israeli forces kill 2 wanted Palestinians in shootout in the occupied West Bank
Araf Tufaha
AP / July 7, 2023
NABLUS, West Bank – Israeli forces killed two wanted Palestinians in a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank Friday, days after Israel concluded a major two-day offensive meant to crack down on militants.
The persistent violence raised questions about the effectiveness of the raid earlier this week in the Jenin refugee camp, which saw Israel launch rare airstrikes on militant targets, deploy hundreds of troops and cause widespread damage to roads, homes and businesses. As a result of the raid, 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.
The Israeli domestic security agency Shin Bet said Friday the two men, who it said were behind a shooting attack this week on a police vehicle, were killed in a gun battle with Israeli forces in the heart of the city of Nablus, the West Bank’s commercial capital.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were killed by Israeli fire, identifying them as Khayri Mohammed Sari Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Moayed Mohammed Maqbool, 32.
In the aftermath of the shootout, bullet casings littered the blood-stained ground. Palestinians carried the bodies of the men killed into the hospital, chanting “God is great!” as guns fired into the air.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised Friday’s operation and said Israel would continue to act to root out militants.
“There will be no loop that isn’t closed and there won’t be a terrorist who doesn’t pay the heaviest price,” he said.
Friday’s deaths are part of a year-long spiral violence that shows no signs of abating, despite the fierce Israeli operation this week in the Jenin refugee camp. They follow a shooting on Thursday by a Hamas militant near an Israeli West Bank Jewish settlement that killed an Israeli soldier.
Monday’s raid in the Jenin refugee camp bore the hallmarks of the second Palestinian uprising, a period of intense violence in the early 2000s that killed thousands. But the current round of fighting remains different from that one, mainly because it is more limited in scope, with Israeli military operations focused on several strongholds of Palestinian militants.
Israel has been staging raids in the West Bank for 16 months, in response to a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis last spring. The northern West Bank, which includes Nablus and Jenin and where the Palestinian Authority has less of a foothold, has been a major friction point during that period.
Over 150 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, and Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 27 people, including a shooting last month that killed four Jewish settlers.
Israel says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.
