Everyday violence. Two Palestinians killed in an Israeli army raid in the West Bank, a knife attack on an Israeli bus and gestures of provocation: the situation escalated Thursday in Israel and the Palestinian Territories in the wake of a deadly attack near from Tel Aviv. Early Thursday morning, Israeli forces carried out an operation in the Palestinian camp of Jenin, a sector in the north of the occupied West Bank, after an attack which left five dead, including two Ukrainian workers and an Arab Israeli policeman, in the suburbs of the metropolis. Israeli Tel Aviv.
Two young Palestinians, aged 17 and 23, were killed “by Israeli occupying forces who were carrying out an incursion into the area of Jenin”, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Other officials also reported serious injuries in these armed clashes. After the attack on Tel Aviv, the Israeli army deployed reinforcements in the occupied West Bank and multiplied the arrests, in particular of members of the family of the perpetrator of the attack, Dia Hamarshah, a Palestinian from Yaabad, a village neighbor of Jenin, having spent four years in Israeli prisons.
On Thursday, the Israeli army confirmed that soldiers and members of the Border Police, a paramilitary unit, “carried out an operation” in Jenin to apprehend “suspects”. “During this operation, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the troops who responded by opening fire,” the army said, adding that a soldier was slightly injured and taken to hospital.
The specter of a new intifada
For its part, the Islamic Jihad, the second Palestinian armed Islamist movement after Hamas and very present in the Jenin sector, has asked its members to place them on alert. “In the light of the events in the camp (…) the secretary general of Islamic Jihad announces a general mobilization of the Al-Quds brigades (armed wing) in their localities”, indicated this armed Islamist movement led by Ziad Nakhalé, based in Damascus. .
Later on Thursday morning, on a bus traveling near the Israeli settlement in the southern West Bank, Elazar, a Palestinian man stabbed a passenger, seriously injuring him, before being shot dead by an armed passenger also on board, it said. the Israeli army.
VIDEO. What is an intifada?
In Jerusalem, far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory statements about the Palestinians, went Thursday morning to the esplanade of the Mosques, called Temple Mount by the Jews, a few days before the start of the Ramadan celebrations. “All night, Hamas threatened me, saying that I was in the line of fire, and told me not to come here. I say to the spokesman of Hamas: shut up,” declared Mr. Ben Gvir on the spot, head of the “religious Zionism” party. In 2000, the controversial visit of the leader of the Israeli right Ariel Sharon on the esplanade served as a trigger for the second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising.
‘Israel must not capitulate’
“I don’t understand why Israel doesn’t eliminate him (Hamas spokesman) in a targeted elimination, he is a terrorist (…) My visit here is to send a simple message, I am not giving up and I am not surrendering, and Israel must not surrender to these terrorists who want us all kill,” he said as he walked past the Dome of the Rock escorted by guards.
The esplanade of the Mosques, under the authority of Jordan but whose entry points have been controlled by Israel since the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, was the scene last year during Ramadan, the month of Muslim fasting, clashes between the Israeli army and the Palestinians. The clashes, which left hundreds injured, led to a deadly 11-day war between the Islamists of Hamas, in power in Gaza, and the Israeli army.
Over the past few days, senior Israeli officials, including President Issac Herzog and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, have traveled to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II, who in turn has visited the President Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas in the hope of calming the situation as Ramadan approaches, starting at the end of the week this year.