Tempers flared after Israeli authorities fatally shot a Palestinian mom and her brother at a checkpoint between East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Wednesday after officials said one of them threw a knife at them.
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The Israeli Police said members of the Border Guard Units, opened fire on the Palestinian woman as she “walked towards the roadblock holding a knife in her hand”. The woman momentarily retreated, according to the police, but then suddenly spun around, took a butcher knife from her handbag and threw it at a nearby policeman.
Police said the 16-year-old boy and his sister approached officers who ordered them to stop.
Israeli police on Tuesday ejected nine Jews from the flashpoint Al-Aqsa compound in east Jerusalem for flouting the site’s rules and briefly detained two Palestinians who attacked Jewish visitors.
Palestinian medics told Ma’an that Israeli forces denied them access to the two Palestinians for medical treatment. Israel says most had attempted or carried out attacks.
The Palestinian news agency Maan identified one of the fatalities as a 24-year-old woman named Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail.
The pace of what had been near-daily Palestinian stabbing, shootings and car-ramming attacks has slowed, although a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus that wounded 15 people on April 18 has fueled Israeli security concerns.
Qalandiya and the adjacent crossing between the West Bank and Israel have been frequent hotspots of conflict in the recent wave of violence that has rocked Israel since September.
Many Palestinian bystanders shared images on social media of the killed pair’s bodies laying on the ground in the vehicle lane of the checkpoint, and later being loaded into an Israeli ambulance under a white drape.
Throughout that period, Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 209 Palestinians, including alleged attackers and protesters, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
A second knife identical to the woman’s was found in the man’s belt, she said, in addition to a butterfly knife.
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Ben-Dahan, who represents the right-wing “Jewish Home” party, said the West Bank and Israel could not be separated because “We have returned to our land so that we will never again have to leave it”.
