Tag: West Bank

Israel launches most intense military operation in West Bank in years; at least 8 Palestinians dead

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Israel on July 3 launched its most intense military operation in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades, carrying out a series of drone strikes and sending hundreds of troops on an open-ended mission into a militant stronghold.

At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

The crackdown was reminiscent of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s and came at a time of growing domestic pressure for a tough response to recent attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last month that killed four Israelis.

The operation took place in the Jenin refugee camp — an area in the northern West Bank that has long been known as a bastion of militants. The fighting, which began shortly after midnight, continued past nightfall.

Throughout the day, black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the camp, a densely populated neighbourhood that is home to some 14,000 people, while exchanges of fire rang out and drones could be heard buzzing overhead. Military bulldozers plowed through narrow streets, damaging buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli forces.

“There are bulldozers destroying the streets, snipers are inside and on roofs of houses, drones are hitting houses and Palestinians are killed in the streets,” said Jamal Huweil, a political activist in the camp, predicting the operation would fail.

The military blocked traffic in and out of Jenin, and the city resembled a ghost town. Streets were empty as armoured Israeli vehicles patrolled. Piles of burning tires and garbage containers littered traffic circles. Power and water supplies were knocked out in the camp.

Palestinian youths occasionally threw stones at army vehicles before darting away.

With the sound of shooting and explosions in the background, at least 10 ambulances rushed to the overwhelmed local hospital as relatives checked to see if loved ones were inside. One ambulance arrived with a bullet hole in front.

The Palestinians and three Arab countries with normalized ties with Israel – Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – condemned the incursion, as did the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Late Monday, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank held an emergency meeting and said it was halting its already limited contacts with Israel. Leaders said a freeze on security coordination would remain in place, and they vowed to step up activity against Israel in the United Nations and international bodies. They also planned to minimize contacts with the United States.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was unswayed.

“In recent months, Jenin has turned into a safe haven for terrorism. We are putting an end to this,” he said. He said the troops were destroying militant command centres and confiscating weapons supplies and factories. He claimed the operation was taking place with “minimum harm to civilians.” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said there were a total of about 10 airstrikes — most of them aimed at keeping gunmen away from ground troops. He accused militants of operating next to a United Nations building and storing weapons inside of a mosque.

He said Israel launched the operation because some 50 attacks over the past year had emanated from Jenin.

Neither the Prime Minister nor Hagari gave any indication when the operation would end.

Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, said on Twitter that she was “alarmed by scale of Israeli forces operation” and noted the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the UN was mobilizing humanitarian aid.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said many camp residents were in need of food, drinking water and milk powder.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 people were wounded — 10 critically. The dead were identified as young men and Palestinian youths, including a 16-year-old boy and two 17-year-olds.

Separately, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the ministry said.

The Jenin camp and an adjacent town of the same name have been a flashpoint since Israeli-Palestinian violence began escalating in spring 2022.

Israel says it has stepped up activity because the Palestinian Authority is too weak to maintain quiet. It also accuses its archenemy Iran of funding militant groups involved in the fighting.

Palestinians reject such claims, saying the violence is a natural response to 56 years of occupation, including stepped-up settlement construction by Israel’s government and increased violence by Jewish settlers.

Jenin was a major friction point in the last Palestinian uprising.

In 2002, days after a Palestinian suicide bombing during a large Passover gathering killed 30 people, Israeli troops launched a massive operation in the camp. For eight days and nights, they fought militants street by street, using armoured bulldozers to destroy rows of homes, many of which had been booby-trapped.

Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin that included the shooting death of a 15-year-old girl and after the military said a pair of rockets were fired from the area last week.

But there also may have been political considerations at play. Leading members of Netanyahu’s far-right government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, have called for a broader military response to the ongoing violence in the area, particularly after the June 20 shooting that killed four people in the Jewish settlement of Eli.

“Proud of our heroes on all fronts and this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called for Israel to kill thousands of militants if necessary. “Praying for their success.” Israeli military experts said they expected the operation to wrap up within a day or two. Prolonged violence and heavy casualties would risk attracting increased international criticism and drawing militants from the Gaza Strip or even Lebanon into the fighting.

Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a large presence in Jenin, threatened to launch attacks from its Gaza Strip stronghold if the fighting dragged on. Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group also made threats, saying the Palestinians have “many alternatives and means that will make the enemy regret its acts.” Hezbollah fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006.

More than 130 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, part of more than a yearlong spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the area in nearly two decades.

Israel says the raids are meant to beat back militants. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers.

Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people uninvolved in confrontations have also died.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.(AP) RUP RUP

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Netanyahu faces mounting security challenges as violence spirals in West Bank

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Benjamin Netanyahu and his loyalists released a brief cry of victory on June 22 morning as the judges at Jerusalem’s District Court told the prosecution that it “would be difficult” to prove allegations of bribery against the Prime Minister in one of the central cases currently deliberated, commonly known as Case 4000. This was seen by Mr. Netanyahu’s team as proof that charges were trumped up.


EDITORIAL | Spiralling violence: On the West Bank

But the next day, Israeli Attorney General and Chief Prosecutor, Gali Baharav-Myara, stated that prosecution will continue, nevertheless. Adv. Boaz Ben-Tzur, head of Mr. Netanyahu’s legal team, called the decision “haphazard and outrageous”.

Military escalation

But the legal challenges Mr. Netanyahu is dealing with have been dwarfed by the mounting security and political challenges his administration is facing. The incidents of the last week left behind a trail of attacks and armed clashed of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with Palestinian gunmen, and later with radical settler groups, which included military escalation not witnessed since the second Intifada, 20 years ago.

The crisis broke out on early Monday morning (June 19), when IDF special forces entered Burkin and the Jenin Refugee Camp to arrest two affiliates of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), who had allegedly been involved in planning recent shooting attacks on Israelis. On their way out of the camp, Palestinians detonated an IED which incapacitated several of the armored personnel carriers, wounding seven soldiers. The IDF top brass views the incident as particularly worrisome, as it shows footprints of Iranian military training and tactics used by their proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

As the convoy called in for rescue, a fierce gunbattle developed, which raged on for 11 hours. The IDF scrambled two Apache attack helicopters to secure the evacuation, in what was the first time the Israeli Air Force fought in the territories since the second Intifada of 2000-2005.

File picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
| Photo Credit:
via Reuters

At the end of the battle, over 30 Palestinians were wounded and seven dead, including a 15-year-old boy, Ahmed Sakr, and 15-year-old girl, Sedil Naghaghiya.

The UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) issued a statement saying that it “deplores the death by live ammunition of two Palestinian refugee children”. Israeli leadership rejected the accusations, saying as all the dead, including the young boy, were identified by Hamas and the PIJ as their own. Even Naghaghiya’s body was wrapped in PIJ flag for her funeral procession.

Attack in Eli

But violence didn’t end there. On Tuesday afternoon (June 20), two Hamas gunmen entered a gas station adjacent to the settlement of Eli and opened fire on diners at the Hummus Eliyahu restaurant, killing four Israelis: Nahman Mordoff (17), Elisha Anteman (18), Harel Masood (21), and 63-year-old Ofer Fayerman, and injuring three others.

The gunmen, identified as Muhanad Shehada and Khaled Sabah, from the village of Urif, members of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, were killed — one on the spot, by an armed settler, and the other by IDF forces, after a chase.

Settler violence

This led to a violent raid of Palestinian villages by radical settler youth, colloquially known as “Hilltop Youth”, primarily from the settlement of Yitzhar. They entered the villages of Turmus Ayya, Huwara and Luban al-Sharkiya, setting fire to fields, about 50 cars, and 30 houses. As the IDF moved in to restore law and order, clashes ensued with Palestinians, reportedly resulting in the death of a 27-year-old man in Turmus Ayya.

The next night, an IDF drone shot missiles at a car from which armed militants had opened fire at the Jalma border crossing, killing two militants from the PIJ and one from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). IDF spokesman said they had been responsible for multiple shooting attacks.

Adding another layer to Mr. Netanyahu’s mound of worries, the focus of international media and governments was on the attacks on Palestinian property by the Hilltop Youth, not on the Palestinian violence. This is a new phenomenon that many accredit to the tacit approval of radicals in Mr. Netanyahu’s government, with fingers being pointed at Finance Minister, Betzazel Smotrich, who also holds responsibilities in the Ministry of Defense, and at Internal Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who possesses a long record of radical activism from before he entered Parliament.

On Friday, a delegation of 18 EU ambassadors came to Turmus Ayya to express their solidarity. None of them visited the settlement of Eli, which they view as illegal. U.S. State Department Spokesman, Vedant Patel, also released a harsh condemnation, demanding Israel prosecute the rioters and compensate for damages to property.

On Sunday, Kan Reshet Bet public radio reported that U.S. administration officials announced they would reverse Trump era policy and restrict all scientific and technological collaborations over the 1967 Green Line, in the territories claimed by Israel. While this was a calculated blow aimed at Mr. Netanyahu’s government, it also painted roughly half a million Israeli settlers as violent extremists.

Mutual prosperity

This reporter met Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the rabbi of the Har Bracha settlement, a settler leader, leading author of religious literature, and noted critic of settler violence. His settlement is across the valley from Yitzhar, where the most avid supporters of revenge attacks live.

He made it unequivocally clear that he opposes any infringement on Palestinian human rights, and believes in coexistence and mutual prosperity, despite his Palestinian neighbors’ radical Islamic beliefs. When asked about Yitzhar, he opposed their actions, but his rhetoric remained reserved.

But another senior figure in Har Bracha was furious and wanted to set the score straight on what settlers think of the Hilltop Youth. “They are enemies of the settlers. I risk my life daily riding on the highway via Huwara. I rode through there one hour before the Feb. 23 murder of Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, and again the following day.” 

“These young brats think they are great heroes going on their wanton vandalism. The only thing they accomplish is having the whole world portray us not as victims of terror, but as savages. They are an insult to everything we stand for: our religion, our personal sacrifices, and our prayers for peaceful coexistence despite everything we endure,” said the person.

Yeshaya Rosenman is the head of the South Asia Project at Sharaka NGO, Tel Aviv

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Palestinian militants fire rockets after Israel strikes Gaza

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Palestinian militants retailiated against Israeli air strikes on Gaza by launching rocket attacks. Israeli airstrikes have killed 19 Palestinians, including three senior militants and at least 10 civilians in recent days.

Palestinian militants fired dozens of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Wednesday, in a first response to ongoing Israeli airstrikes that have killed 19 Palestinians, including three senior militants and at least 10 civilians.

The rocket fire set off air-raid sirens throughout southern Israel and as far away as the Tel Aviv area, on the Mediterranean Sea, 80 kilometres away. Residents had been bracing for an attack since Israel carried out its first airstrikes early Tuesday.

Israeli TV stations showed air defence systems intercepting rockets above the skies of Tel Aviv. In the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, people lay face-down on the ground as they took cover during one attack.

In a move that could further raise tensions, Israeli police said they would permit a Jewish ultranationalist parade to take place next week. The parade – meant to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem and its Jewish holy sites – marches through the heart of the Old City’s Muslim Quarter and often leads to friction with local Palestinian residents.

As air raid sirens continued to wail, Israeli media said at least 100 rockets had been fired. Israeli rescuers said two people were hurt running for shelter, and local officials said an empty home in the southern town of Sderot was struck.

Throughout the day, Israeli aircraft hit targets in Gaza for the second straight day, killing at least three Palestinians.

Tuesday’s strikes killed three senior Islamic Jihad militants and at least 10 civilians — most of them women and children. Palestinian militants have pledged to retaliate while Israel says it is prepared for a further escalation of hostilities.

The Israeli military said its attacks were focused on Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant infrastructure in the coastal enclave.

The army said one airstrike targeted militants travelling to a rocket launcher site in southern Gaza Strip.

Medics said the strike killed one man and seriously wounded another. Later Wednesday, another airstrike killed a Palestinian in northern Gaza and two Palestinians in the southern city of Rafah. Palestinian officials could not confirm whether the targets were militants.

It also remained unclear whether two Palestinians killed in a separate airstrike late Tuesday were militants or civilians. Israel has claimed the men were preparing to fire anti-tank missiles.

The Israeli military had instructed residents of southern Israel to remain near bomb shelters, and schools were still closed for a second day as a precaution against rocket attacks.

Israel says the airstrikes are a response to a barrage of rocket fire launched last week by Islamic Jihad in response to the death of one of its members from a hunger strike while in Israeli custody.

Israel says it is trying to avoid conflict with Hamas, the more powerful militant group that rules Gaza, and confine the fighting to Islamic Jihad.

“Our actions are meant to prevent further escalation,” said Rear Adm. Danny Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman. “Israel is not interested in war.”

Hamas has expressed solidarity with its smaller counterpart in Gaza, and the two groups often coordinate with one another.

If the violence continues, the risk of a full-blown war could increase. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the Islamic group, which opposes Israel’s existence, took control of Gaza in 2007.

Israel has come under international criticism for the high civilian toll on Tuesday, which included wives of two of the militant commanders, some of their children and a dentist who lived in one of the targeted buildings along with his wife and son.

In past conflicts, rights groups have accused Israel of committing war crimes due to the high number of civilian deaths. Israel says it does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and holds militant groups responsible, saying they operate in heavily populated residential areas and use residents as human shields.

Meanwhile, Israel police said they would allow the annual flag-waving march marking “Jerusalem Day” to take place along its traditional route through a main Palestinian thoroughfare in the Old City on Thursday next week. The decision could raise the risk of further violence.

Thousands of Israeli nationalists take part each year, with some chanting racist slogans, as they walk across the Old City to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in the Jewish Quarter. Last year’s march was marked by violence, and in 2021, the march helped trigger a rocket attack on Jerusalem and an 11-day war with Hamas.

Earlier on Wednesday, the military said that Palestinian gunmen opened fire at troops in the Palestinian town of Qabatiya in the northern West Bank during an army raid. Troops returned fire, killing the two men, and confiscated their firearms, it said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the slain men as Ahmed Assaf, 19, and Rani Qatanat, 24. The Islamic Jihad militant group later claimed the two men as its members.

Israel has been conducting near-daily military raids in the occupied West Bank for over a year to detain suspected Palestinian militants, including many from Islamic Jihad. The northern West Bank city of Jenin and its environs have been the frequent target of such raids as it has emerged as a hub of Palestinian militant activity.

Israel says the raids in the West Bank are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks.

At least 107 Palestinians, around half of them militants, have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2023, according to an Associated Press tally. At least 20 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast War. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state.

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The Abraham Accords: ‘Palestinian leaders don’t realise that the region is changing’

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Palestinian human rights lawyer and former diplomat Ghaith al-Omari, a prominent advocate of the two-state solution and negotiations with Israel, gave FRANCE 24 a lengthy interview on a recent visit to Paris. In this last of a three-part series, he discussed the Abraham Accords, which saw the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries. 

Ghaith al-Omari has long been a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, acting as a Palestinian negotiator at the 2000 Camp David Summit convened by then-US president Bill Clinton and again at the 2001 Taba Summit in Egypt. He was an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas until 2006. With the peace process stalled since 2014, he now works as a senior fellow at the Washington Institute’s Irwin Levy Family Program on the US-Israel Strategic Relationship.  

Al-Omari was in Paris two weeks ago to unveil the Whispered in Gaza project – a series of short animated films based on the testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza – at the French National Assembly.  

Former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari pictured on March 22, 2023 in Paris. © Marc Daou, FRANCE 24

After speaking about the political situation in the occupied West Bank under the unbroken rule of the 87-year-old Abbas and the despair of Palestinian youth in the first two of this three-part interview series, al-Omari discusses the Abraham Accords, mediated by the US and signed in 2020. 

While the Palestinian cause remains popular among the Arab people, the signatories of the Accords have opened a new era for the region. Has this come at the expense of the Palestinian people?

I don’t believe that the signatories of the accords have turned their back on Palestinians. We are witnessing a new way of doing politics in the Middle East, centred in the Gulf. The Arab countries that are undertaking this new approach did this to pursue their national interests, and they have every right to do so. I think the Palestinian leaders don’t realise that the region is changing, they still live in the past, they still think that the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser [the former Egyptian president who championed pan-Arabism] will come back. They will not. Those good old days of ideologies such as pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism and Nasserism are slowly disappearing and no longer dominate (the region). 

This is the reality. And in this regard, Palestinians need to ask themselves if they can benefit from the new order when everyone else is focused on maximising their own interests, or are they going to remain on the sidelines and watch as history passes them by? I believe that there is a way for Palestinians to profit from the situation. As a former Palestinian negotiator, I can tell you that when we needed to effectively put pressure on the Israeli government, we call on Washington first, or course, and then Amman and Cairo. Why? Because the Arab countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel have the leverage to pressurise the nation’s leaders. And now, other Arab countries also have leverage. Let’s not forget that the United Arab Emirates have signed the Abraham Accords on condition that the Israeli government cease annexations of Palestinian territories. So, in a certain way, they’ve already delivered to the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now have the choice of meeting with the leaders of these countries to express their respect of the decision to establish formal ties with Israel and seek out ways to profit from the situation, or do what they’re currently doing, which is condemning the new order and refusing to engage. 

How can the Palestinians benefit from the Accords? 

If they choose to engage, they will obtain strengthened political support from Arab countries. As we saw recently, the United Arab Emirates was willing to sponsor a UN Security Council resolution in support of the Palestinians in their fight against the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements. More than political support, there are also possibilities for economic benefits. Here’s an example: Two years ago Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates signed a deal to address each other’s shortcomings. Jordan is a regional leader in clean energy production thanks to solar power plants yet remains one of the world’s most water deprived countries. The deal was then to build solar power plants in Jordan and desalination stations in Israel [editor’s note: Israel is a world leader in water desalination but is lacking in energy, particularly in the south of the country], swapping solar energy and water so that the needs of both countries are met. The United Arab Emirates meanwhile financed the project knowing full well that all surpluses sold would profit themselves. It’s a win-win-win situation. The Palestinians would have been a perfect candidate for this kind of deal as there are many project ideas such as those that they could participate in. There is much to gain but they need to make the choice of joining. The region is changing, and the Abraham Accords are here to stay. And we can see that despite the current tension between the Israeli government and its Arab counterparts, they continue to develop economic and security ties. 

Regarding the current state of Israeli politics, do the Accords help restrain the most right-wing Israeli government in history?

At the end of the day, the Israeli considerations will be primarily domestic politics, like all countries on earth. Nevertheless, with the Abraham Accords countries, today Israel has to think twice before taking certain actions. I can even tell you that according to an Israeli official source, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli diplomatic offices as well as Israeli intelligence community are all very sensitive to criticisms from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. They almost got used to criticism from Egypt and Jordan; they don’t take it seriously that much. But due to the popularity of the Abraham Accords in Israel, when these new partners criticise, the Israelis listen. So it creates a counter-pressure. We know, for example, that Benjamin Netanyahu held back his Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir when the latter wanted to take more provocative steps in Jerusalem. It is the prime minister’s fear of the United Arab Emirates, which has rapidly developed strong ties with Israel, cutting the relation that is getting him to really pressure his minister to refrain from some of these provocative actions. He doesn’t always succeed, he may not always want to succeed, but Israel is finding itself under a new pressure, without which the extremist elements of this government would be much stronger and much more assertive. 

From a broader perspective, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which once stood at the centre of international relations, seems to have been relegated to a regional issue. Do you agree? Has this helped facilitate a reconciliation between the signatories of the Accords and Israel?

Nowadays, the international community considers certain issues to be much more important, such as the war in Ukraine, China’s expanding power, Iran’s nuclear threats, not to mention the various crisis in Yemen, Syria and Libya. In terms of immediate risks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has thus been eclipsed by much more risky conflicts. At a certain point, in the 90s’ up to the early 2000s’, there was a sense of opportunity, the idea that if you invest politically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you might get results. Today there is no sense of possibility. The Western world and regional players have understood that Palestinians are too weak to sign a deal and the Israelis are not interested anyways in such a deal. Political leaders are hence looking for an opportunity elsewhere, and that’s why the Abraham Accords are so popular. If you were a leader, would you want to engage in something that will fail? Even so, the world has moved on. In the end, it’s up to Palestinians and Israelis to re-capture the world’s attention on the issue of their conflict. Ironically, the extremist and sometimes racist policies of the current Israeli government attract a lot of scrutiny and generated many reactions internationally. The recent summoning of the Israeli ambassador to the US department of state in Washington was almost unprecedented. Even Israel’s new allies, such as the United Arab Emirates, have begun criticising the nation all the time. It’s one thing to ignore this conflict, but if there is a collapse, especially around Jerusalem, it can have spillover effects throughout the Arab world, throughout the Islamic world. So it’s a reminder that the issue cannot be completely ignored. 

This article was adapted from the original in French. 

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Situation in Palestinian Territories ‘is completely hopeless if you’re young’

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Palestinian human rights lawyer and former diplomat Ghaith al-Omari, a prominent advocate of the two-state solution and negotiations with Israel, gave FRANCE 24 a lengthy interview on a recent visit to Paris. In this first of a two-part series, he lamented the lack of hope and prospects for Palestinian youth. 

Ghaith al-Omari has long been a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, acting as a Palestinian negotiator at the 2000 Camp David Summit convened by then-US president Bill Clinton and again at the 2001 Taba Summit in Egypt. He was an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas until 2006. With the peace process stalled since 2014, he now works as a senior fellow at the Washington Institute’s Irwin Levy Family Program on the US-Israel Strategic Relationship. 

Al-Omari was in Paris last week to unveil the Whispered in Gaza project – a series of short animated films based on the testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza, recounting their daily struggles under the rule of extremist Palestinian group Hamas and the Israeli blockade, both of which have been entrenched since 2007. 

In the first part of the interview, al-Omari spoke about the especially difficult situation faced by young Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, many of whom feel desperately unhappy as they endure economic crisis and political paralysis. 

Former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari pictured on March 22, 2023 in Paris. © FRANCE 24

Al-Omari also discussed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, widely seen as the most hardline in Israeli history, and which rules out any revival of the peace process.  

 

What are the prospects for the average 20-year-old in Gaza today? 

Unfortunately, the prospects are extremely dim. They have no options. The ability to find work, to find employment in Gaza, is non-existent. The economy in Gaza has been destroyed – partly because of the siege by Israel but also because of the practices of Hamas. Today, if you want to have a business in Gaza, you have to be either a member of Hamas or close to Hamas. If you don’t, you have no prospects. 

That’s why we see so many young people in Gaza taking huge risks and emigrating through the Mediterranean. Every day or two we hear about Palestinians from Gaza drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. The situation today is completely hopeless if you’re a young Palestinian. 

And what about the West Bank? 

In the West Bank the situation is also hopeless. The economic situation is better; it is more open to the Israeli market, it is more open to Jordan. But there are also no prospects. The Israeli occupation creates limits on economic development – but the Palestinian Authority’s corruption also [leads to a] lack of opportunity for young people in the West Bank.

In both the West Bank and Gaza, there is also no space for political activism. It’s not only that the economy is dead, it is also that political life is dead. Actually, I was looking at a poll earlier: 50 percent [of people] in Gaza feel they cannot safely criticise Hamas; 50 percent in the West Bank feel they cannot safely criticise the Palestinian Authority. So you can’t have economic opportunity – and if you do not have political opportunity, you end up with despair. Today, this is what we have in Gaza and in the West Bank. 

So how can you give young Palestinians hope in politics and democracy, amid all this despair?

First of all, I think we need to start with steps that address Palestinian-Israeli relations, because you cannot talk about Palestinian domestic affairs without talking about the Israeli occupation. We cannot end it today […]. But we – and by we, I mean the international community – need to pressure Israel to take more steps that will move us closer to ending the occupation, and we need to take a stronger position when Israeli cabinet ministers make unacceptable statements.

Second, we need to apply pressure on the authorities both in Gaza and in the West Bank. In Gaza there are regional backers for Hamas. Qatar is their biggest economic backer; Turkey is their biggest political backer. And these are countries that are open to pressure from Europe, from the United States. Qatar is a close ally, [a] commercial ally with Europe, with the US. Turkey is a member of NATO and dependent on [it]. So we need to pressure them to create more political space [in Gaza].

We also need to work with our Arab allies, Jordan and Egypt, to pressure the Palestinian Authority to open the political space.

Third, we need to look at the economic situation and try to address the Palestinian private sector directly – not to go through governments, because both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are corrupt. We need to fund projects on the ground – either ones that benefit a large number of Palestinians like infrastructure, or projects that invest in the private sector to allow for an independent private sector that can be resistant to pressure from the government. 

You’ve participated in several rounds of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Would you tell a young Palestinian to continue hoping for a two-state solution, which is to say, a Palestinian state coexisting with Israel? 

 Yes, because there is simply no alternative to this solution, and it is never too late for dialogue. At the end of the day, we have learned that Israel is here to stay; it will not disappear. The Palestinians will not disappear. And the only way to solve this conflict is through dialogue. Only a solution with two states, where each nation can express its aspirations and identity, is viable. However, today that is not possible. It is not possible for both Palestinian and Israeli reasons. 

On the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Authority is too weak. To reach a peace deal, you need strong leaders. Peace is a good thing – but peace is also a painful thing. Peace requires compromises. The Palestinians will have to give up some things that are important to them, and so will the Israelis. […] And when the leaders are weak, the leaders do not have the legitimacy to make these decisions. So on the Palestinian side, they’re too weak to reach a deal.

On the Israeli side, they do not want a deal. Today, the Israeli government does not support the two-state solution. That’s very clear. They are quite openly against a two-state solution. Moreover, some members [of the government], some very powerful members – like Finance Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich and Security Minister [Itamar] Ben-Gvir – these are people who want to annex the West Bank. These are people who do not even recognise that the Palestinians exist – Smotrich said it here in Paris. (Editor’s note: at a March 19 gala event in Paris, Smotrich told the crowd: “There are no Palestinians, there are just Arabs.”) So today it is impossible.   

This article was translated from the original in French. 

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Israeli police say three wounded in Tel Aviv shooting

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A Palestinian gunman opened fire on a crowded street in central Tel Aviv late Thursday, wounding three people before he was shot and killed, Israeli officials said. The shooting came hours after an Israeli military raid killed three Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

The incidents were the latest violence in a year-long wave of Israel-Palestinian fighting that shows no signs of slowing.

The Tel Aviv shooting occurred on Dizengoff Street, a popular thoroughfare filled with shops and restaurants. The city was filled with people on Thursday night, the start of the Israeli weekend, and as anti-government protests were taking place.

The MADA rescue service said one of the wounded was in critical condition, while Zaka, another medical service, said the shooter was killed.

An image on social media showed what was believed to be the attacker standing in the middle of the road as he pointed a pistol. Dozens of police and rescuers rushed to the scene, which was quickly cordoned off.

Earlier Thursday, three Palestinian militants were killed in a shootout with Israeli troops in the northern West Bank.

Israeli security forces said they raided the village of Jaba to arrest suspects wanted for attacks on Israeli soldiers in the area. The suspects opened fire on Israeli troops, who shot back and killed three people, all affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, police said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the men as Sufyan Fakhoury, 26, Nayef Malaisha, 25 and Ahmed Fashafsha, 22, and said they were shot by Israeli fire during the military operation. A fourth man was hospitalized with a bullet wound to the head, authorities added.

Israeli police released a photo of assault rifles, pistols, ammunition and explosive devices they said troops confiscated in Jaba, just south of the flashpoint city of Jenin. Gunmen shot down an Israeli drone during the clashes, the military said.

The Jaba militant group, a fledgling militia of disillusioned young Palestinians who have taken up guns against Israel’s occupation, said members opened fire and hurled explosive devices at Israeli forces from a sedan — that now sits, smashed and bloodied, in the center of town. Residents said Israeli troops killed members of the group who had been recently incarcerated by Israel and had carried out a recent shooting attack at a nearby checkpoint.

This year has been marked by escalating unrest across the West Bank, as Israeli arrest raids spiral into protracted firefights with armed Palestinians.

On a visit to Israel, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Thursday that he discussed concerns over the upsurge in violence in the occupied West Bank with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The United States was “urging everyone to de-escalate,” the defense secretary said, particularly in the run-up to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which coincides this year with the Jewish holiday of Passover.

“The U.S. remains firmly opposed to acts that could trigger further instability, including settlement expansion and inflammatory rhetoric,” Austin said, adding that he was “especially disturbed” by settler violence against Palestinians. “We will continue to oppose actions that put a two-state solution out of reach.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s far-right government, which took office late last year, has already approved thousands of new settlement homes, legalized unauthorized outposts built partially on private Palestinian land and pledged to further entrench Israeli rule over the occupied territory. Last month, in response to a Palestinian attack that killed two Israelis, a mob of settlers rampaged through the Palestinian town of Hawara and torched dozens of homes and businesses, leaving one man dead.

The Israeli military on Thursday issued a report into the rampage that identified a series of failures, including an insufficient number of soldiers in the area and the need to send reinforcements faster. It said “lessons were drawn” about coordination between the army, police and internal security agents.

“This is a severe incident that took place under our responsibility and should not have happened,” said Israel’s military chief, Lt. Col. Herzi Halevi. “We will draw the necessary lessons and study them to prevent similar events from reoccurring in the future.”

Austin urged for calm even as the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad issued a veiled threat, saying its fighters would respond to the morning raid “to deter the enemy and avenge the blood of the martyrs.” Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip has previously followed violence in the West Bank.

The Jaba armed group includes gunmen from various factions, including Islamic Jihad and the armed offshoot of the nationalist Fatah party. Militants in the village say that Islamic Jihad supports the group and provides members with weapons.

The group is part of a larger trend of emerging armed groups across the West Bank that have been mounting shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians and opening fire during Israeli raids on their towns, defying the increasingly unpopular Palestinian Authority. In areas of the northern West Bank where much of the fighting has been focused, the PA’s control is receding as young Palestinians’ hopes dim for statehood.

The hardscrabble streets of Jaba teemed with young Palestinians in black chanting against the Israeli occupation and firing into the air as they held the bodies of militants aloft.

Yousef Hammour, a 28-year-old in the funeral procession, said Palestinian rage at Israel is only intensifying with the stepped-up arrest raids.

“Everyone’s in shock, everyone’s angry,” said Hammour. “Every single day they’re killing more and more of us. If they attack us, we’ll attack them.”

Earlier in the week, at least six Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that 14-year-old Walid Nasser died Thursday from wounds suffered in Tuesday’s raid.

At least 74 Palestinians, around half of them affiliated with militant groups, have died in Israel’s raids in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. During the same time 14 people, all but one of them civilians, were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians seek for their future state. In the decades since, more than 700,000 Jewish settlers have moved into dozens of settlements in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, which the international community considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.

(AP)

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With West Bank in turmoil, new Palestinian militants emerge

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The stuttering blasts of M-16s shattered the quiet in a West Bank village, surrounded by barley fields and olive groves. Young Palestinian men in Jaba once wanted to farm, residents say, but now, more and more want to fight.

Last week, dozens of them, wearing balaclavas and brandishing rifles with photos of their dead comrades plastered on the clips, burst into a school playground — showcasing Jaba’s new militant group and paying tribute to its founder and another gunman who were killed in an Israeli military raid in February.

Palestinian militants prepare for a military parade. File
| Photo Credit:
AP

“I’d hate to make my parents cry”, said 28-year-old Yousef Hosni Hammour, a close friend of Ezzeddin Hamamrah, the group’s late founder. “But I’m ready to die a martyr.”

Similar scenes are playing out across the West Bank. From the northern Jenin refugee camp to the southern city of Hebron, small groups of disillusioned young Palestinians are taking up guns against Israel’s open-ended occupation, defying Palestinian political leaders whom they scorn as collaborators with Israel.

With fluid and overlapping affiliations, these groups have no clear ideology and operate independently of traditional chains of command — even if they receive support from established militant groups. Fighters from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other organisations attended last week’s ceremony in Jaba.

In near-daily arrest raids over the past year, Israel has sought to crush the fledgling militias, leading to a surge of deaths and unrest unseen in nearly two decades.

While Israel maintains the escalated raids are meant to prevent future attacks, Palestinians say the intensified violence has helped radicalise men too young to remember the brutal Israeli crackdown on the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago, which served as a deterrent to older Palestinians.

This new generation has grown up uniquely stymied, in a territory riven by infighting and fragmented by barriers and checkpoints.

Palestinian militants take part in a military parade.File

Palestinian militants take part in a military parade.File
| Photo Credit:
AP

More than 60 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the start of 2023, after Israel’s most right-wing government in history took office. About half were militants killed in fighting with Israel, according to an Associated Press tally, though the dead have also included stone-throwers and bystanders uninvolved in violence.

At least 15 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks in that time, including two Israelis shot on February 26 in the town of Hawara, just south of Jaba. In response, Israeli settlers torched dozens of buildings — a rampage that also left one Palestinian dead.

“It’s like the new government released the hands of soldiers and settlers, said now they can do whatever they want,” said Jamal Khalili, a member of Jaba’s local council.

At the recent memorial service, children with black militant bands on their foreheads gathered around the gunmen, eager for a glimpse of their heroes.

“The outcome is what you see here,” Khalili added.

Last week, an Israeli military raid in the northern city of Nablus sparked a shootout with Palestinian militants that killed 10 people. The raid targeted the most prominent of the emerging armed groups, the Lion’s Den.

Israeli security officials claim the military has crippled the Nablus-based Lion’s Den over the past few months, killing or arresting most of its key members. But they acknowledge its gunmen, who roam the Old City of Nablus and pump out slick Telegram videos with a carefully honed message of heroic resistance, now inspire new attacks across the territory.

“The Lion’s Den is beginning to become an idea that we see all around,” said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. Instead of hurling stones or firebombs, militants now mainly open fire, he said, using M-16s often smuggled from Jordan or stolen from Israeli military bases.

The official said the Army was monitoring the Jaba group and others in the northern cities of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem. But he acknowledged the Army has difficulty gathering intelligence on the small, loosely organised militant groups.

The Palestinian self-rule government administers parts of the West Bank, and works closely with the Israeli military against its domestic rivals, particularly the militant Hamas group, which runs the Gaza Strip.

With young Palestinians increasingly viewing the Palestinian Authority as an arm of the Israeli security forces rather than the foundation for a future state, Palestinian security forces are loathe to intervene against the budding militias. Palestinian forces now rarely venture into militant strongholds like the Old City of Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, according to residents and the Israeli military.

Jaba militants said the Palestinian security forces have not cracked down on them. Residents said the group, founded last September, has rapidly grown to some 40-to-50 militants.

Hammour described Palestinian leaders as corrupt and out of touch with regular Palestinians. But, he said, “Our goals are much bigger than creating problems with the Palestinian Authority.”

With the popularity of the PA plummeting, experts say it cannot risk inflaming tensions by arresting widely admired fighters.

The PA “is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy,” said Tahani Mustafa, Palestinian analyst at the International Crisis Group. “There’s a huge disconnect between elites at the top and the groups on the ground”.

Palestinian officials acknowledge their grip is slipping.

“We fear any of our actions against (these groups) will create a reaction in the street,” said a Palestinian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

With the Israeli Military stepping up raids, the West Bank’s power structure faltering and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government expanding settlements on occupied land, frustrated Palestinians say they are not in pursuit of any Islamist or political agenda — they simply want to defend their towns and resist Israel’s 55-year-old occupation.

For 28-year-old Mohammed Alawneh, whose two brothers were killed in confrontations with Israeli forces, two decades apart, the Jaba group is a “reaction”. He said he could support peace if it meant the end of the occupation and the formation of a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. For now, he said, it’s clear Israel doesn’t want peace.

Hamamrah, the Jaba group’s late Commander, threw stones at the Israeli Army as a teen and later joined an armed offshoot of Fatah, the Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to his mother, Lamia. After 10 agonising months in Israeli prison, he became religious and withdrawn. He spoke of taking revenge.

After his death, Lamia discovered he had helped form the Jaba group and that Islamic Jihad had supplied them with weapons, including the gun Hamamrah fired at Israeli troops on January 14.

The Army chased him into Jaba, killing Hamamrah along with another gunman, Amjad Khleleyah. Their crushed and bloodstained car now sits in the center of Jaba like a macabre monument.

At his funeral, Lamia said Hamamrah’s friends urged her to show pride in a son who became a fighter and inspired the whole village.

But Lamia wept and wept. Her 14-year-old daughter, Malak, now wants die a martyr, too.

“I’m just a mother who lost her son,” she said. “I want this all to stop.”

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Israeli settlers rampage after deadly Palestinian attack in West Bank

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Scores of Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage in the northern West Bank late Sunday, setting dozens of cars and homes on fire after two settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman. Palestinian medics said one man was killed and four others were badly wounded in what appeared to be the worst outburst of settler violence in decades.

The deadly shooting, followed by the late-night rampage, immediately raised doubts about Jordan’s declaration that Israeli and Palestinian officials had pledged to calm a year-long wave of violence.

Palestinian media said some 30 homes and cars were torched. Photos and video on social media showed large fires burning throughout the town of Hawara — scene of the deadly shooting earlier in the day — and lighting up the sky.

In one video, a crowd of Jewish settlers stood in prayer as they stared at a building in flames. And earlier, a prominent Israeli Cabinet minister and settler leader had called for Israel to strike “without mercy.”

Late Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 37-year-old man was shot and killed by Israeli fire. The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said two other people were shot and wounded, a third person was stabbed and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar. Some 95 others were being treated for tear gas inhalation.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned what he called “the terrorist acts carried out by settlers under the protection of the occupation forces tonight.”

“We hold the Israeli government fully responsible,” he added.

The European Union said it was “alarmed by today’s violence” in Huwara, and said “authorities on all sides must intervene now to stop this endless cycle of violence.” The UK’s ambassador to Israel, Neil Wigan, said that “Israel should tackle settler violence, with those responsible brought to justice.”

As videos of the violence appeared on evening news shows, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for calm and urged against vigilante violence. “I ask that when blood is boiling and the spirit is hot, don’t take the law into your hands,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.

The Israeli military said its chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, rushed to scene. It said troops were being reinforced in the area as they worked to restore order and search for the shooter.

Ghassan Douglas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlements in the Nablus region. said that settlers burned at least six houses and dozens of cars in Hawara, and reported attacks on other neighbouring Palestinian villages. He estimated around 400 Jewish settlers took part in the attack.

“I never seen such an attack,” he said.

The rampage occurred shortly after the Jordanian government, which hosted Sunday’s talks at the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, said the sides had agreed to take steps to de-escalate tensions and would meet again next month ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“They reaffirmed the necessity of committing to de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence,” the Jordanian Foreign Ministry announced.

After nearly a year of fighting that has killed over 200 Palestinians and more than 40 Israelis in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Jordanian announcement marked a small sign of progress. But the situation on the ground immediately cast those commitments into doubt.

The Palestinians claim the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip – areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war – for a future state. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements as illegal and obstacles to peace.

The West Bank is home to a number of hard-line settlements whose residents frequently vandalize Palestinians land and property. But rarely is the violence so widespread.

Prominent members of Israel’s far-right government called for tough action against the Palestinians.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader who lives in the area and has been put in charge of much of Israel’s West Bank policy, called for “striking the cities of terror and its instigators without mercy, with tanks and helicopters.”

Using a phrase that calls for a more heavy-handed response, he said Israel should act “in a way that conveys that the master of the house has gone crazy.”

Late Sunday, however, Smotrich appealed to his fellow settlers to let the army and government do their jobs. “It is forbidden to take the law into your hands and create dangerous anarchy that could spin out of control and cost lives,” he said.

Earlier, in Israeli ministerial committee gave initial approval to a bill that would impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted in deadly attacks. The measure was sent to lawmakers for further debate.

There were also differing interpretations of what exactly was agreed to in Aqaba between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said the representatives agreed to work toward a “just and lasting peace” and had committed to preserving the status quo at Jerusalem’s contested holy site.

Tensions at the site revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif have often spilled over into violence, and two years ago sparked an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas militant group during Ramadan.

Officials with Israel’s government, the most right-wing in Israeli history, played down Sunday’s meeting.

A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity under government guidelines, said only that the sides in Jordan agreed to set up a committee to work at renewing security ties with the Palestinians. The Palestinians cut off ties last month after a deadly Israeli military raid in the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, who led the Israeli delegation said there were “no changes” in Israeli policies and that plans to build thousands of new settlement homes approved last week would not be affected.

He said “there is no settlement freeze” and “there is no restriction on army activity.”

The Jordanian announcement had said Israel pledged not to legalize any more outposts for six months or to approve any new construction in existing settlements for four months.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, said they had presented a long list of grievances, including an end to Israeli settlement construction on occupied lands and a halt to Israeli military raids on Palestinian towns.

Sunday’s shooting in Hawara came days after an Israeli military raid killed 10 Palestinians in the nearby city of Nablus. The shooting occurred on a major highway that serves both Palestinians and Israeli settlers. The two men who were killed were identified as brothers, ages 21 and 19, from the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha.

Hanegbi was joined by the head of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency who attended the talks in neighbouring Jordan. The head of the Palestinian intelligence services as well as advisers to President Mahmoud Abbas also joined.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who has close ties with the Palestinians, led the discussions, while Egypt, another mediator, and the United States also participated.

In Washington, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, welcomed the meeting. “We recognize that this meeting was a starting point,” he said, adding that implementation will be critical.”

It was a rare high-level meeting between the sides, illustrating the severity of the crisis and the concerns of increased violence as Ramadan approaches in late March.

In Gaza, Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seeks Israel’s destruction, criticized Sunday’s meeting and called the shooting a “natural reaction” to Israeli incursions in the West Bank.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Hamas militant group subsequently took control of the territory, and Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade over the territory.

(AP)

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Israel to ‘strengthen’ settlements after shooting attacks

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians, including plans to beef up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, in response to a pair of shooting attacks that killed seven Israelis and wounded five others.

The announcement cast a cloud over a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and threatened to further raise tensions following one of the bloodiest months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years.

Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet, which is filled by hard-line politicians aligned with the West Bank settlement movement, approved the measures in the wake of a pair of shootings that included an attack outside an east Jerusalem synagogue on Friday night in which seven people were killed.

Netanyahu’s office said the Security Cabinet agreed to seal off the attacker’s home immediately ahead of its demolition. It also plans to cancel social security benefits for the families of attackers, make it easier for Israelis to get gun licenses and step up efforts to collect illegal weapons.

The announcement said that in response to public Palestinian celebrations over the attack, Israel would take new steps to “strengthen the settlements” this week. It gave no further details.

There was no immediate response from Washington. The Biden administration, which condemned the shooting, opposes settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank — lands sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The topic is likely to be high on the agenda as Blinken arrives Monday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials.

The weekend shootings followed a deadly Israeli raid in the West Bank on Thursday that killed nine Palestinians, most of them militants. In response, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a barrage of rockets into Israel, triggering a series of Israeli airstrikes in response. In all, 32 Palestinians have been killed in fighting this month.

Early Sunday, the Israeli military said that security guards in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim had shot a Palestinian who was armed with a handgun and released a photo of what it said was the weapon. There were no further details on the incident or the alleged attacker’s condition.

It remains unclear whether the Israeli steps will be effective. The attackers in the weekend shootings, including a 13-year-old boy, both appear to have acted alone and were not part of organized militant groups.

In addition, Netanyahu could come under pressure from members of his government, a collection of religious and ultranationalist politicians, to take even tougher action. Such steps could risk triggering more violence and potentially drag in the Hamas militant group in Gaza.

“If it’s even possible to put this violent genie back into the bottle, even for a little while, this would require the reinforcement and proper deployment of forces … and carefully managing the crisis without being guided by the widespread calls for revenge,” wrote Amos Harel, the defense affairs commentator for the Haaretz newspaper.

Friday’s shooting, outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem on the Jewish Sabbath, left seven Israelis dead and three wounded before the gunman was killed by police. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in 15 years.

Authorities published the names of four of the victims. They included 14-year-old Asher Natan; Eli Mizrahi, 48, and his wife Natali, 45; and Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56. Funerals for some victims were scheduled Saturday night.

Mourners lit memorial candles near the synagogue on Saturday evening, and in a sign of the charged atmosphere, a crowd assaulted an Israeli TV crew that came to the area, chanting “leftists go home.”

Ella Sakovich, an aunt of Natali Mizrahi, said that her niece had been celebrating the Jewish Sabbath with her husband and his father when they heard gunfire outside on Friday night.

“While eating, she and her husband wanted to help and went out of the house to treat the wounded; they shot both of them,” Sakovich said in a statement released by Hadassah Hospital, where Natali Mizrahi worked serving food to patients.

In response to the shooting, Israeli police beefed up activities throughout east Jerusalem and said they had arrested 42 people, including family members, who were connected to the shooter.

But later Saturday, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy opened fire elsewhere in east Jerusalem, wounding an Israeli man and his son, ages 47 and 23, paramedics said. Both were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hospital, the medics added.

As police rushed to the scene, two passers-by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital.

Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel on Monday. The Biden administration condemned Friday night’s shooting and has called for calm on all sides, but given few details on how it expects to promote these goals.

The attacks pose a pivotal test for Israel’s new far-right government.

Both Palestinian attackers behind the shootings on Friday and Saturday came from east Jerusalem.

Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem hold permanent residency status, allowing them to work and move freely throughout Israel, but they suffer from subpar public services and are not allowed to vote in national elections.

Residency rights can be stripped if a Palestinian is found to live outside the city for an extended period or in certain security cases.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem in a step that is not internationally recognized and considers the entire city to be its undivided capital.

Israel’s new firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.

Speaking to reporters at a hospital where victims were being treated, Ben-Gvir said he wanted the home of the gunman in Friday’s attack to be sealed off immediately as a punitive measure and lashed out at Israel’s attorney general for delaying his order.

Overhauling Israel’s justice system, including the attorney general’s office, has been at the top of the agenda of the new government, which says unelected judges and jurists have overwhelming powers.

The divisive issue helped fuel weekly protests by Israelis who say the sweeping proposed changes would weaken the Supreme Court and undermine democracy.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv Saturday evening for a new protest. Some raised banners describing Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as “a threat to world peace.”

The marchers also held a moment of silence in memory of Jerusalem shooting victims.

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, meanwhile, upheld its decision to halt security coordination with Israel to protest the deadly raid in Jenin.

After a meeting headed by President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority called on international community and the U.S. administration to force Israel to halt its raids in the West Bank.

Last year, as the Israeli military intensified its arrest raids following a string of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel, at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. It was the highest annual death toll for more than a decade and a half. Over 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis last year, according to Israeli figures.

Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.

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