Ongoing violence called into question the effectiveness of the raid earlier this week on the Jenin refugee camp, in which Israel carried out rare airstrikes against militias, employing hundreds of troops and causing severe damage to streets, homes and businesses. The balance of the raid was 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead.
Israel’s Shin Bet national security agency reported Friday that the two men, who shot a police vehicle days earlier, were killed in a shootout with Israeli forces in central Nablus, the commercial capital of the West Bank.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead as Khayri Mohammed Sari Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Moayed Mohammed Maqbool, 32. Two militias, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, claimed that both were members of their groups.
After the shooting, which left the ground strewn with blood and bullet casings, several Palestinians carried the bodies to the hospital amid shouts of “God is great” and shots into the air.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised Friday’s operation and said Israel would continue with measures to root out the militants.
“No loophole will be left unclosed or a terrorist who does not pay the highest price,” he said.
Friday’s deaths continue a year-long spiral of violence that shows no sign of abating despite Israel’s violent operation in the Jenin camp. On Thursday, a Hamas militant killed an Israeli soldier near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Monday’s raid on Jenin had the hallmarks of the second Palestinian uprising, a period of intense violence in the early 2000s that killed thousands. But the difference is that today’s Israeli operations are more limited in scope, focused on strongholds of Palestinian militias.
Israel has been conducting incursions into the West Bank for 16 months in response to a series of Palestinian attacks in the middle of last year. The northern West Bank, where Nablus and Jenin meet and where the Palestinian Authority is least strong, has been a major flashpoint during that period.
More than 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year, while Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed at least 27 people, including four settlers last month.
Israel says most of the Palestinians it has killed were militants. But it has also killed young stone-throwers and people who have not been involved in the fighting.
Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians aspire to create their independent state in those territories and the Gaza Strip.
FUENTE: Associated Press
