Posted in:
The Israeli emergency services and military announced that a Palestinian killed an Israeli and injured four others, including a Palestinian, on Saturday, October 290, 2022 in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
The Israeli army said the “terrorist” attacker who opened fire near a checkpoint in Hebron was later killed by a security guard, noting that soldiers were looking for other suspects.
Interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid tweeted on Saturday that he was “praying” for the wounded in Kiryat Arba in the West Bank, adding: “Terror will not defeat us.”
Magen David Adom’s paramedics initially reported that one of the 50-year-old Israelis had “passed out” from a severe upper body injury. But a spokesman for Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem later told AFP that he had died from his injuries.
For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent claimed that the injured Palestinian was being treated in a hospital in Hebron, while the other three Israelis suffered less serious injuries.
Far-right Israeli MP Itamar Ben Gvir, whose hardline Zionist alliance is looking for big gains in Tuesday’s election, said his home in Hebron was the target.
However, the Israeli security forces did not confirm this information, while the Israeli media quoted security sources as saying that Ben Gvir’s home, located in a settlement in Hebron, was not targeted. This city is home to extremist settlers.
This operation comes just days before the general elections in Israel, the fifth in less than four years, in the context of renewed violence in the West Bank occupied since 1967.
Lapid is running for the elections on 1 November, a few days after the conclusion of a historic agreement to delimit the maritime borders with Lebanon, an enemy country. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also plans to return to power through these legislative elections.
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wencesland, expressed his concern on Friday before the Security Council over “the intensity of violence in the occupied West Bank”, where “despair and anger escalate. Once again”.
“The occupied West Bank is experiencing a negative cycle. Large numbers of people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed and injured in the daily violence,” he said.
He indicated that he had given all parties a “clear message” that “the urgent priority is to reduce the escalation of the situation”. He stressed that “this cannot be the goal in itself”, calling for “a return to the political process”.
Tensions have increased in recent months in the northern occupied West Bank, particularly in the areas of Nablus and Jenin, strongholds of Palestinian armed factions, where Israeli forces have stepped up their raids following deadly attacks on Israelis in March and April.
UN figures indicate that more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, the largest death toll in the West Bank in nearly seven years.
