WAFA reported on this incident too, including allegations the woman carried out a stabbing, but the Palestinian news agency also included this caveat: “To be noted, Israeli police and army forces often resort to fatally shooting Palestinians – who are involved in alleged attacks against Israelis – while making no effort to apprehend them”. According to IDF, an assailant attempted to stab a policeman but the knife did not penetrate the officer’s flak jacket, prompting the officer to fire upon and wound his assailant.
Advertisement
But Israel accuses him of incitement, saying he has not condemned attacks on Israelis and pointing to his false accusation last week that Israel “summarily executed” a Palestinian boy who stabbed an Israeli boy.
Shortly after, Israeli border police stopped to question a Palestinian man walking in “a suspicious manner” through a neighbourhood around East Jerusalem, a police spokesman said. The Palestinian teen is recovering in an Israeli hospital.
In Jerusalem, where most of the violence has taken place, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said a 16-year-old Palestinian drew a knife on officers early Saturday when they asked for identification after a bystander said he was behaving suspiciously.
Palestinians said the roadblocks are collective punishment and ineffective in deterring attackers since those with bad intentions would try to reach Jewish neighborhoods through dirt roads anyway.
Rights groups have criticized Israel for implementing different legal systems for Palestinians and Israeli settlers living in the same area.
Following the shooting, hundreds of Israeli settlers rioted across the occupied West Bank, with multiple attacks reported on Palestinian homes and vehicles. On the edge of the Issawiyeh neighborhood, drivers honked their horns at a group of Israeli police and paramilitary border police who were taking their time checking each vehicle and asking a few of the younger Palestinians to lift up their shirts to show they were not armed.
Over the past month, eight Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks, a lot of them stabbings. The assailant was shot and wounded.
Hundreds more have been wounded in clashes with Israeli forces.
Palestinian towns and villages in the Nablus area are surrounded by Israeli settlements and outposts, many of which are protected by the Israeli military and have gained notoriety for being comprised of the most extremist settlers.
Stone-throwing protests erupted across the West Bank and Gaza on Friday, and assailants firebombed a site revered by Jews as the tomb of biblical Joseph on a “day of rage” against Israel. This figure includes those killed after carrying out attacks. Both sides have turned up gruesome video recordings to support their claims. After the attack, a crowd of Israelis gathered outside the bus station and chanted “death to Arabs”.
Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, has praised the attacks but not claimed responsibility for them.
“We utterly deplore this violation of press privilege and call on local Palestinian media organisations to immediately verify all media credentials”, the FPA said in a statement. Others are applying for permits.
That has led to Israeli troops setting up even more dividers.
The violence comes at a time when a possible partition of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two states – Palestine alongside Israel – is fading.
Those have since been buried by the second intifada, in which organized deadly attacks targeted Israelis from 2000 to 2005, and three wars in Gaza that killed thousands of Palestinians.
The Jerusalem plateau with the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock is called the Temple Mount by Jews and the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims and is overseen by a Jordanian Islamic trust.
The unrest has been fuelled in large part by Palestinian fears that Israel wants to change the status quo observed for decades at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Advertisement
Clashes at the site have become common.
