Fresh clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians rocked the occupied West Bank city of Jenin Tuesday as a Palestinian allegedly stabbed a police officer in Israel before being shot dead.
Israeli troops launched a fourth day of operations around Jenin after an assailant from the district shot and killed three people in a Tel Aviv bar last week.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett overnight visited the reopened bar that was the scene of Thursday’s attack, which sparked an all-night manhunt before the shooter was killed in a firefight.
“We will not let our enemy stop our lives,” Bennett vowed.
“We will continue to live our lives and at the same time we will fight where they are located, in their bases, at their source – and, please God, we will win.”
The Israeli army has stepped up its raids, arrests, and attacks on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security sources confirmed on Tuesday.
Speaking to The New Arab, the security sources said that the Israeli forces arrested at least 15 Palestinians during raids on dozens of houses in the region.
Five detainees were arrested from the city of Jenin, three from Nablus city, three from Bethlehem and four from the city of Hebron in the south of the West Bank, according to sources.
The Israeli raid on the cities set off clashes with young Palestinians, who responded to the tear gas and live fire by throwing stones and attempting to blockade the roads in a bid to prevent the arrests.
Israeli forces often carry out overnight raids in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank to arrest Palestinians who they accuse of planning attacks.
Thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli administrative detention, sometimes for months, without trial.
The latest aggression by Israel followed an incident on Tuesday in the Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, where Israeli police said an officer was checking a person who aroused his suspicion when “the attacker pulled out a knife and attacked the officer”.
The officer “responded quickly, fired and neutralised the suspect, whose death was declared on-site,” police said.
The officer was hospitalised with light wounds from the attack using a kitchen knife.
The assailant was in his 40s and from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said.
Ashkelon said it deployed extra police on motorcycles to patrol schools and commercial areas.
On its part, the Ramallah-based Health Ministry said in a press statement sent to The New Arab that the Israeli police killed a Palestinian worker from Hebron while he was working on a construction site in occupied Ashkelon city.
In another attack, in Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv, a Palestinian assailant from the Jenin area killed five people before police gunned him down.
Israel killed 355 #Palestinians last year, including 87 #children, and wounded over 16,500, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.#Palestinehttps://t.co/TeS3XBXOtQ
— The Palestine Project (@PalestineProjct) April 5, 2022
Since March 22, tensions dramatically increased across the occupied West Bank and Israel, with the Israeli army killing at least 15 Palestinians, including two women. 14 Israelis were killed in sporadic attacks carried out by Palestinians.
The rise in violence comes during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and days before the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter.
Last year, tensions in Jerusalem flared into 11 days of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli soldiers and settlers forcibly entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Israeli bombardment had killed hundreds, including women and children.
source:thenewarab