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REFUGEE CAMP JENIN, West Bank – Israeli forces have killed six Palestinians in clashes in the West Bank this week, and clashes between police and Palestinians erupted on Friday after early Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Al-Aqsa Mosque. The surge in violence comes as Israel pushes extremists and activists after the deadliest series of terrorist attacks in Israel in years.
A video on social media shows Israeli forces using tear gas and lightning grenades at the shrine to smash a crowd of men – some in masks – throwing stones and furniture. Doctors said at least 154 Palestinians and three police officers were injured, according to local media reports.
An Israeli police officer said in a radio interview on Friday that only a few of the approximately 12,000 worshipers were involved, including some who were throwing stones at Jews praying on the neighboring Western Wall. Officials cleared the square in time for about 60,000 worshipers to return to the mosque for noon prayers.
Violence at the same holy site a year ago, when Israeli police entered a mosque to fight protesters, led to a two-week airstrike in nearby Gaza Strip. Authorities are trying to prevent a new escalation during the rapprochement of religious holidays that bring worshipers to Jerusalem: Ramadan, Easter and Easter.
Israel has said it will ban Palestinians from entering the West Bank from Friday afternoon to Saturday. The military says it has additional forces in the West Bank, where it is stepping up action against alleged extremists.
Palestinians killed in Thursday’s attacks include two youths from the Jenin area, a poor outbreak of political and military activity in the northern occupied territories.
The area has been the subject of heightened Israeli arrests and economic restrictions since April 7, when Raed Hazem, a 28-year-old accountant at the Jenin refugee camp, fatally shot dead three people at a bar on busy Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. Hazem was killed in a shootout with Israeli security forces after a nine-hour chase that night.
The wave of violence comes as the Israeli government faces the prospect of new elections after losing its fragile parliamentary majority, and as peace talks between Israel and the widely unpopular Palestinian leadership remain dying. The leader of the only Arab party in the ruling coalition, the United Arab List, warned on Friday that an Israeli police raid on the mosque could lead them to withdraw from the partnership.
“There are no political considerations when it comes to Al Aqsa,” UAL President Mansour Abbas said in a radio interview.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has vowed to “eradicate this terrorism” and called on Israeli civilians with weapons permits to carry weapons in public.
The shooting in Tel Aviv followed three other attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel, which left 13 dead. Since last month, Israel has doubled the number of battalions designed to reinforce troops in the West Bank, as well as along Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Israeli forces are searching West Bank towns and villages for suspects or accomplices in recent Palestinian attacks. In Israel, security forces questioned dozens of Israeli Palestinians on suspicion of links to the Islamic State group after a Palestinian gunman convicted of trying to join Islamic State militants in Syria killed two people in northern Israel. the city of Hadera after all March.
A 15-year-old Israeli-Palestinian girl stabbed a 47-year-old man in the leg in the port city of Haifa on Friday. Days earlier, another Palestinian Israeli citizen, who was detained in Turkey in 2015 for trying to cross the Syrian border, stabbed three people and hit another person with his car.
Among the men in the Jenin area killed in the past 24 hours is the brother of Ayman Kamamji, a Palestinian prisoner who escaped from Gilboa Prison in northern Israel last year and was later captured following national persecution.
Four other Palestinians were killed in operations Wednesday night near the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Amin Hazem, Raed Hazem’s uncle, said Raed told the family that he would violate Ramadan in Jaffa. His family watched the first news without knowing that the shooter was Raed. Around 6 a.m., Raed’s father began calling family members to confirm that his son was dead. Israeli soldiers raided the family home the next day, but Raed’s parents and brothers and sisters had fled.
Hazem said he was shocked that his nephew was the shooter, but was not surprised that anger was raging across the West Bank.
Because of the Israeli occupation, “there is pressure, pressure and pressure and then suddenly an explosion,” he said. Almost all those killed in Jenin in recent weeks have been 30 or younger, living only after the Oslo peace deal.
Highway of hope and broken heart
The faces of some of the dead appear on posters posted by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Fatah party. Hazem said some of the dead were unrelated to the group, but joining them is a way to keep the faction afloat at a time when there is deep dissatisfaction with the Palestinian political system in the West Bank.
“Everyone buys their own weapons and bullets,” said a relative of Raed, who declined to give his name because he was wanted by Israeli security forces. There was an M-16 rifle with the Israeli army insignia in the passenger seat of his car.
Violent clashes erupted in the West Bank city of Nablus earlier Thursday after Palestinians fired on Israeli armored vehicles escorting a task force to repair the tomb of Joseph, a sacred Jewish site in the Palestinian mine. according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Israeli military has said it will impose a general blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 4pm to midnight on Friday – as the Jewish holiday of Passover begins. People will not have the right to enter or leave, except in special humanitarian cases.
Israeli intelligence agencies are preparing to step up violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which for the first time in years is approaching Easter and Easter.
After the Attack in Tel Aviv last week, the police increased the level of alarm to their highest level from last May when the bloody Palestinian-Israeli clashes around and in the Al-Axi mosque, a historical flammable point in Jerusalem caused a 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war was accompanied by deadly inter-community battles and bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers across the West Bank.
Why many Israelis living near Gaza opposed the ceasefire
“We are going into oblivion – only God knows what will come of it,” said Hussein Zakarna, a resident of Jenin whose 17-year-old son, Mohammed, was killed by Israeli forces on Sunday.
The Israeli military said he was involved in the violence during the day. But Zakarna said he had banned his son from joining others in demonstrations against Israeli troops just a day earlier. He said his son was on his way home from work at a vegetable stand to break the Ramadan fast with his family.
“You’re dead in both directions,” Zacarna said.
Rubin reported from Tel Aviv. Hendrix contributed from Jerusalem.
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