Israel bombs the West Bank while continuing a “never before seen” expansion of settlements (the War in the Middle East, day 273)
Since the Hamas attack against Israel, on October 7, and the subsequent war that broke out in the Gaza Strip, violence has also intensified in the West Bank (territory occupied by Israel since 1967), where 557 Palestinians were killed by the army Israelite or settlers also from Israel.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced this Wednesday four more deaths (four men, aged between 20 and 25) as a result of an Israeli attack on the Nur Shams refugee camp, near the city of Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank. The Israeli army, in turn, guarantees that it only hit “a terrorist cell when it was preparing an explosive device†.
Precisely in the West Bank, the Palestinian organization Peace Now denounces that the Israeli authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers of land in the Jordan Valley, this being the largest confiscation, they accuse , of land in the West Bank occupied for more than three decades.
Palestinians consider the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank (Israel has built more than 100 settlements across the West Bank and more than 500,000 Jewish settlers live there) as the main obstacle to any lasting peace agreement.
News also comes from the United Nations today that the rapporteurs for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and judicial independence, Francesca Albanese and Margaret Satterwaithe, have expressed concern about recent measures to increase the administrative power of settlers in the West Bank – considered a covert attempt at annexation by Israel.
The rapporteurs recalled that the annexation of Palestinian territories “is absolutely prohibited by international law”.
OTHER FEATURED NEWS:
⇒ In the city of Carmiel, in northern Israel, a man was seriously injured this Wednesday and another died after being stabbed in a shopping center. The attacker also died at the scene. The Israeli police stated that the investigation is continuing, but political sources say that the attacker (a resident of the Israeli city of Nahf, with an Arab majority) may have had a terrorist motivation. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas promptly stated that the event is “a natural reaction to the crimes of the occupation”, while the Islamic Jihad movement applauded the “heroic operation” which represents a “resistance and response from the people†. But, after all, it may not have been an attack with such political significance. The sister of the downed attacker (who was with him and their mother at the scene) guarantees that she asked her brother for help “after being harassed in the shopping center†, guaranteeing that her brother’s behavior o “does not have nationalist connotations†.
