The escalation of violence continues. An Israeli policeman died and an Israeli teenager was injured on Monday (February 13th) in East Jerusalem, in two stabbing attacks carried out by two Palestinian teenagers, according to the Israeli police.
The new attacks come amid fears of an uncontrollable unleashing of violence as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has escalated sharply since the start of the year, and after nightly clashes in Gaza and the West Bank left one dead, Palestinian .
In the late afternoon, an Israeli policeman was injured during a routine check on a bus at the entrance to the Shuafat Palestinian refugee camp, Israeli police said. The policeman was stabbed by a teenager and hit by a bullet fired by a civilian in the direction of the assailant but having missed its target. The policeman, a 22-year-old Bedouin man, died of his injuries, police said.
The 13-year-old teenager from Chouafat was arrested. The police also announced that they had arrested three members of his family and had, during an operation in Shuafat, fired at a suspicious car, injuring its driver.
Earlier, a 17-year-old Jewish teenager was lightly injured in a stabbing attack by a 14-year-old Palestinian in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to police sources. The attacker, also from Shuafat, in the eastern part of Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, was arrested.
Night strikes on the Gaza Strip
saying act “in response” to a rocket fired Saturday evening from the Gaza Strip and destroyed by its anti-aircraft defense, the Israeli army announced that it had struck overnight “an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacture of rockets belonging” to Hamas, the ruling Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza.
A thin coastal territory, the Gaza Strip and its 2.3 million inhabitants have been under Israeli blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007.
According to the Hamas interior ministry in Gaza, the night strikes made “big damage to four houses, a wedding hall and a gas station”, near the military camp targeted by Israeli missiles, in the southwest of Gaza City. No casualties were reported.
Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas figure, has warned that further Israeli strikes will prompt a response from the armed wing of his movement whose rockets could reach “targets in Tel Aviv and beyond”, he told Agence France-Presse.
In Nablus, a city in the north of the occupied West Bank, where the army has been increasing for almost a year what it presents as night operations “counter-terrorism” looking for “suspects”, Israeli forces carried out a new raid overnight from Sunday to Monday. A 21-year-old Palestinian was killed in an exchange of fire during the incursion, during which soldiers arrested five people.
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Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 47 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors), nine civilians (including three minors) and an Israeli policeman and a Ukrainian, according to a count by Agence France-Presse, based on official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
Legalization of nine settlements in the West Bank
In a move likely to heighten tensions, Israel’s security cabinet announced on Sunday that it would legalize nine Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The cabinet presented the measure as a response to a series of Palestinian attacks in East Jerusalem, including one that killed three people on Friday.
These settlements were previously illegal under Israeli law because they were established without government approval. But for the UN, any Jewish settlement enterprise in the West Bank is illegal under international law, whether or not it is legitimized by the government.
The security cabinet also said it intended to announce a new round of housing construction for settlers in the West Bank.
On Monday, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken said to himself on Monday “deeply concerned” by these two decisions, denouncing “such unilateral measures, which exacerbate tensions and undermine efforts to negotiate a two-state solution”.
‘It’s time for the world to punish Israel for its disregard for UN resolutions’Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. More than 475,000 Israelis reside in settlements in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), where 2.8 million Palestinians live.