Security forces also shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed and wounded an American man near a Jerusalem rail station.
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The number does not include two elderly Palestinians who died after long delays at Israeli military checkpoints, a Palestinian prisoner who died while under Israeli custody, and a Palestinian man died after a heart attack shortly after his family said he was beaten by Israeli soldiers.
In all, 11 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, and 67 Palestinians died by Israeli fire over the past six weeks. The two Palestinians had driven a motorcycle to an Israeli paramilitary police checkpoint at a junction near a Jewish settlement, dismounted and rushed at the troopers with knives drawn, an Israeli police spokesperson said.
Since the start of the latest wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories at the beginning of October, 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers.
Daoud Zatari told local Arabic radio on Friday that Israel agreed to return the bodies only after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who has blamed Israel for the recent violence – pursued the issue in worldwide fora, requesting the bodies be returned to their families for proper burial.
Israel, which is not a member of the court, has declined to cooperate with both this and a previous probe relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that Palestine is not a state and so has no right to join.
Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour supported New Zealand’s efforts but said the resolution doesn’t address the need of Palestinian civilians for global protection and is “not strong enough to stop Israel … from the continuous aggression it is waging against the Palestinian civilian population”.
Hebron – home to a shrine known to Jews as Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque – is a city of 200,000 Palestinians.
The Palestinians carried national flags and chanted anti-Israeli slogans when skirmishes broke out between them and Israeli forces.
Israel has pledged to abide by the decades-old arrangement at the site and says false allegations by Palestinian officials, echoed in Arab social media, that it intends to encroach on Muslim rights of worship have been inciting violence. He said the age restrictions were enforced only partially.
In at least two of the cases, eyewitnesses disproved the Israeli army’s version of events saying that the schoolgirls Bayan al-Aseeli and Dania Irsheid, shot dead on two separate occasions, possessed no knife.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has submitted a fresh dossier of evidence on Israeli war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to the global Criminal Court (ICC).
On Friday Israel said it had released the bodies of seven Palestinians, apparently to ease tensions.
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Still shows Israeli soldier attacking a Palestinian medic with pepper spray as he attempted to assist an injured person. She underscored that innocent people have been injured and killed on both sides, and cautioned that the situation may further degenerate into a large-scale commission of crimes that may fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC.
