Another Palestinian, 24-year-old Omar Tareq Saadi, also died on Sunday of injuries sustained in an Israeli military attack on the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The early-morning raid killed nine more Palestinians and was the deadliest operation in two decades, Palestinian officials said.
Wafa said. At least 144 Israeli settlers were reported on Saturday in the West Bank, an occupied territory that Palestinians consider part of their future state. Settlers attacked a Palestinian man in Masafar Yata in the south; In two villages near Ramallah, Masked attackers set fire to houses and cars and threw stones; In Nablus, settlers uprooted around 200 trees. Dozens of settlers established a new unauthorized military base outside the northern village of Aqraba, then attacked Palestinian landowners who arrived and injured a medic who came to help the injured, Israeli rights group Yesh Din said. The Israeli army did not intervene, the report added.
“The frequency of terrorist attacks against Palestinian citizens and their property has increased to an unprecedented level,” said Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Douglas.
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli security forces closed in on the family of a Palestinian accused in a shooting that killed seven people at the gates of a synagogue in East Jerusalem on Friday night. Officials have promised that the house will be demolished soon.
At an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Our response will be strong, swift and precise.” Anyone who tries to hurt us, we hurt them and those who help us.
Israeli police said they have arrested at least 42 people in connection with Friday’s attacks as they bolstered their forces in anticipation of further violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
On Saturday, a second attack took place in an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem just outside the Old City walls, when a 13-year-old Palestinian boy from a nearby settlement shot and wounded two Israelis. According to Israeli police, the boy was arrested at the scene by an armed civilian.
Netanyahu’s new government, made up of a coalition of settlement activists and ultranationalists who say past measures have been insufficient to counter Palestinian violence, is the most right-wing in Israel’s history.
On Saturday, Israeli officials announced new counterterrorism proposals, more support for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the loosening of restrictions on civilian gun ownership — prompting retaliatory military strikes.
At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Givir demanded that the government allow seven illegal settlements in the West Bank in seven days in exchange for the seven people killed on Friday, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported. .
In the year 30, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The violence coincided with a pre-arranged visit to the region by US officials who have warned for weeks of an escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken’s planned visit to Israel on Monday and Tuesday will include meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, the Foreign Ministry announced.
US administration officials have struggled to figure out how to avoid direct contact with far-right Israeli ministers, including Ben Givir, who has been repeatedly accused of inciting anti-Arab hatred, by pledging to become national security minister. Executing the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists and allowing Israeli soldiers to shoot at Palestinians who throw stones.
Ben Givir announced the counter-terrorism measures on Saturday. They are similar to Israel’s previous response to Palestinian attacks and have been called “collective punishment” by rights groups.
Early Saturday, a small number of Israeli protesters gathered near an intersection leading to a Palestinian settlement in East Jerusalem. One of the youths said they wanted “the terrorists to know we’re here.”
As they began to surround the car, the police rolled down the window of the Palestinian-looking driver and yelled at him to keep moving. As the police rammed the vehicle, they pushed the crowd away. “Vengeance!” someone said in Hebrew. He was holding a sign.
Aireh Blumberg, 66, a plumber from nearby Maale Adumim, who participated in the rally, said anyone who supports the Palestinian attackers, including family members, should be deported.
“I think they should be given a one-way ticket out of Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu said he and Likud lawmakers would control the coalition’s zealous members.
But Ben Gvir is under pressure from the foundation to do more. When he visited the scene of Friday’s shooting, residents said, “This happened on your watch! what do you do?”
After Saturday’s cabinet meeting, he lauded the swift action taken to demolish the suspected militant’s house and said, “The speed of the demolition will send a message to the enemy.”
One of the victims of Friday’s shooting near the synagogue was 14-year-old Asher Natan, who was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem on Saturday night.
Also killed were Eli and Natalie Mizrahi, a couple in their 40s who were buried together early Sunday at a hilltop cemetery in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh.
Eli’s father, Shimon, told reporters near the scene of the attack that they left their dinner on Friday night after hearing gunshots on the street and went to help.
At the funeral, many mourners said his death was part of a greater, divine plan for Israel. A mourner read from the scriptures and said: “Indeed, anyone killed in the name of God, and if Palestinians were killed by Palestinians, it was in the name of God, then there is a purpose in that terrible tragedy.”
“The terrorist came to the synagogue knowing he was going to kill them just because they were Jewish,” said Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, who, in his previous role as Jerusalem mayor, “asked residents to carry guns during the stabbing.” intifada” of 2015-2016, marked by a wave of stabbings in Palestine.
Eli Mitzrahi’s sister interrupted him, saying, “Get out of here. You are talking like this because there is media here. You’re putting on a show!”
According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, the shooting suspect is Khairi Alqam, a 21-year-old Palestinian from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur. Alkam was named after his grandfather, who was stabbed to death by a Jewish assailant in 1998, Israeli news channel Yan reported. Among those arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack was Chaim Perlman, a member of the violent anti-Arab Kahana Chai movement, who was jailed for a month in 2010. Wing activists including ex-Kahnist Ben Givir.