Hardliners, including senior members of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, responded angrily to his comments.
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“Rather he should use the force necessary to fulfil the objective”.
Footage recently broadcast by Al-Jazeera shows forces firing multiple shots at a Palestinian assailant after he was on the ground.
“It’s impossible to judge the situation the combatants are in”, Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Channel 10 television on Saturday.
Addressing high school students on Wednesday, Eisenkot got into political hot water when he spoke of the rules of engagement.
Earlier in the morning, Israeli forces arrested 17-year-old Sajeda Nizam Mahmoud from the Zaatara Checkpoint in Nablus for having a knife in her purse.
“When there’s a 13-year-old girl holding scissors or a knife and there is some distance between her and the soldiers, I don’t want to see a soldier open fire and empty his magazine at a girl like that, even if she is committing a very serious act”, he said. “A Palestinian attacker attempted to stab an (Israeli) soldier at the Bitot Junction”, the army said.
Stabbings, shootings and auto rammings by Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and a USA citizen.
She did not elaborate, but her statement was prompted by Israeli media reports that as many as 500 posters condemning Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians had gone up as part of an annual “Israel Apartheid Week” organised by activists.
On Friday, 19 February, Israeli security forces shot dead three Palestinian assailants in separate incidents in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, police and the military said, as a wave of heightened violence persisted into its fifth month.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas Sunday and discussed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the US State Department said.
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Israel says the violence is fueled by a Palestinian campaign of lies and incitement.
