February 05, 2023 04:04 am | Updated 04:04 am IST – AQABAT JABR REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank
Palestinians test harm in a home which was destroyed by Israeli troops throughout a navy raid in Jericho, within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on February 4, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The Israeli military raided a refugee camp close to the Palestinian metropolis of Jericho on February 4, besieging homes it stated have been getting used as hideouts for Palestinian attackers and capturing at residents who opened hearth. The preventing wounded six Palestinians, two critically, stated the Palestinian Health Ministry, and jolted a usually quiet oasis city that has seen much less violence than different West Bank cities.
The military stated it entered the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp southwest of Jericho within the occupied West Bank to seek for suspects concerned in a capturing assault final week at a close-by Israeli settlement.
Last Saturday, with the West Bank on edge after the deadliest Israeli navy raid in 20 years and two subsequent Palestinian assaults in east Jerusalem that killed seven folks, the military stated a Palestinian gunman had opened hearth in a restaurant at a settlement close to Jericho. After firing one bullet, the gunman fled the scene, the military stated. No one was wounded.
The military stated a number of Palestinians had holed up of their houses after the capturing with the assistance of household and have been planning future assaults.
To power the fugitives to give up, a navy bulldozer clawed on the partitions of one of many houses as an Israeli commander shouted threats over a loudspeaker. Camp residents reported receiving textual content messages urging households to maintain their kids inside and keep away from clashing with Israeli troops.
The suspects and relations trickled out of one of many houses and turned themselves in, the navy stated. Security forces had leveled a lot of the home, leaving a pile of rubble and twisted steel. Palestinian protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at navy jeeps as they rumbled down the camp streets, whereas some gunmen opened hearth. The Israeli navy fired again, wounding six, none critically, the Palestinian Health Ministry stated.
The incursion comes as violence rises in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank underneath Israel’s new far-right authorities, which has taken a combative stance in opposition to the Palestinians. Israel captured the West Bank within the 1967 Mideast battle, together with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians search these territories for his or her hoped-for impartial state.
The Israeli military has ramped up near-nightly raids within the occupied West Bank since a collection of lethal Palestinian assaults inside Israel final spring. Over the final yr and a half of escalating raids, Jericho has remained a kind of sleepy desert city, spared a lot of the violence.
Since final week’s capturing on the close by settlement, the Israeli navy has blocked entry to a number of roads into Jericho — a closure that has positioned town underneath a semi-blockade, disrupting enterprise and creating hourslong bottlenecks at checkpoints that affected even Palestinian safety forces, footage confirmed.
The Palestinian Authority, in retaliation for final week’s raid into the Jenin refugee camp that killed 10 Palestinians, declared a halt to safety coordination with Israel.
Nearly 150 Palestinians have been killed final yr within the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest in these areas since 2004, in response to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Some 30 folks have been killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022.
The Israeli military says a lot of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not concerned in confrontations have additionally been killed.
In the night Saturday, the Israeli navy stated air defenses shot down a drone launched from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into the nation’s south. No Palestinian group stated it was behind launching the drone, which set off warning sirens on the Israeli facet of the frontier.
The growing violence within the West Bank has solid a shadow over Gaza-Israel borders in current days after months of quietness, with a number of rocket launches and airstrikes.
Source: www.thehindu.com
