An Israeli air strike early in Gaza City, launched after two rockets were fired at Israel, killed a pregnant woman and her two-year-old daughter, further fuelling Palestinian anger.
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The Palestinian casualties were the result of “barbaric and racist” Israeli military actions that violated global and humanitarian laws, the MPs charged.
The policeman had spotted a “suspicious” vehicle at a checkpoint between the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim and Jerusalem and ordered the woman, identified as 31-year-old Israa Jaabis, to stop. He was not affiliated with any Palestinian faction or organisation, something he had in common with other Palestinians carrying out recent attacks seemingly of their own free will.
In a revenge stabbing, a 17-year-old Jew in the southern Israeli city of Dimona wounded two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis on Friday. The rocket was reportedly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defence system.
One person was shot and transferred to a local hospital for treatment, according Luba Samri, an Israeli police spokeswoman. He is also the third 13-year-old to be shot dead by Israeli forces in the same period.
The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has warned the Tel Aviv regime to avoid further “foolish” acts against Palestinians after Israel carried out deadly air raids on the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza border has been largely calm since last summer’s war between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the coastal territory.
“This weekend we have seen clear incitement encouraging the breach of Israel’s sovereignty, violent confrontation against Israelis and threatening the residence of southern Israel”, said IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner.
A Palestinian man who had been hit in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet on Thursday, also died of his injuries on Saturday. In Jerusalem’s Old City, a Palestinian woman stabs a Jewish man before being shot and seriously wounded by her victim.
Palestinian protester kicks a burning tyre during clashes with Israeli troops near Nablus.
But now, as youths clash with soldiers amid fears that this month’s unrest will spiral into a new intifada, a Palestinian security official in the occupied West Bank said they were “being vigilant to ensure firearms are not used”.
A source in the Palestinian security services said there had been “a malfunction in her vehicle, and there was no bombing”.
The demonstrations have spread into Arab cities in Israel, and the Arab Israeli sector has called for a general strike this week.
Against a backdrop of Muslim protests over Jewish visits to the al-Aqsa plaza, Islam’s third holiest site and also revered by Jews as the site of biblical temples, Palestinians have been attacking Israelis with knives, rocks and, on at least one occasion, guns. They had no known links to armed groups and have seemingly targeted Israeli soldiers and civilians at random, complicating efforts to predict or prevent the attacks, according to the AP.
Security forces were on high alert in Jerusalem in preparation for two big events Saturday evening that were expected to draw thousands: a Euro2014 qualifying soccer match pitting Israel against Cyprus, and an open-air concert by reggae rapper Matisyahu.
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The so-called worldwide community has scandalously called for an “end to violence on both sides” and is careful not to use the means at its disposal to impose adoption of global resolutions taken against the Israeli colonial state.
