By Ahmad GHARABLI
Agence France-Presse
AL-LUBBAN ASH-SHARQIYA, Palestinian Territories, June 21, 2023 (AFP) — Four people were shot and killed Tuesday near a settlement in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials said, a day after an army raid in the territory left six Palestinians dead.
The deaths are the latest in a surge of violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which before Tuesday’s shooting had killed at least 166 Palestinians, 21 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian this year.
In Huwara, near Nablus, around 100 Jewish settlers attacked residents and set fire to farmland, the mayor of the town and a resident told AFP by telephone.
It was apparently a repeat of the sequence of events that followed a Palestinian attack in February that claimed the lives of two Israelis in the area.
An AFP reporter at the scene saw olive groves on fire.
Several dozen people were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Other settler attacks were reported in the evening, in Al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, near Eli, and in Beit Furik, another town in the north of the West Bank.
The tally of Tuesday’s attack compiled from official sources includes combatants as well as civilians and, on the Israeli side, three members of the Arab minority.
It took place at a petrol station near the Eli settlement, south of Nablus.
Four other people were wounded, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services.
The Israeli military said “a civilian in the area neutralized one of the terrorists” — without giving further details on their condition.
A military spokesman said Israeli security forces “located and neutralized” a second assailant who had fled the scene in a stolen car, near the northern city of Tubas.
The Palestinian health ministry announced the body of a man “shot by the Israeli occupation” arrived at a hospital in Tubas.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and the territory, excluding east Jerusalem, is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
An MDA spokesperson said its medics confirmed four fatalities but their nationalities were not immediately available.
Officials in the Eli settlement named one of those killed as resident Elisha Antman.
An AFP photographer saw Israeli police officers inspecting a partially covered body, as soldiers and medics stood nearby.
The area around the gas station and an adjacent restaurant were sealed off with police tape.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces were “working on the ground in order to settle accounts with the murderers”.
“Those who have attacked us are either in the grave or in prison, and so it will be here,” he said in a statement.
Eliana Passentin, an Israeli settler and resident of Eli, said “we should be able to live our lives every day without being afraid”.
“This is our land, this is where we live and we will be strong,” she told AFP at the scene.
The German foreign ministry condemned Tuesday’s violence.
“Nothing can justify such terrorist attacks. Our thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones,” it said in a statement.
The United States also added its voice to those condemning the attack, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying Washington was “also concerned about the continuation of violence in Israel and the West Bank in recent weeks that has killed and injured Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”
– Deadly raid in Jenin –
The shooting comes a day after Israeli forces launched a raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, in which six Palestinians were killed.
A spokesman for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Hazem Qassem, described Tuesday’s shooting as a “response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation” in Jenin and elsewhere.
Tariq Selmi, spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group, praised a “heroic commando operation” and described it as Palestinians exercising their “legitimate right to self-defense”.
The sixth Jenin fatality, Amjad Aref Jaas, died from his gunshot wounds on Tuesday, a Palestinian health ministry statement said.
More than 90 Palestinians were wounded in the hours-long raid, according to health officials, while the Israeli military said eight security personnel were wounded.
After the firefight between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants ended on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry announced Israeli troops killed a 20-year-old near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Zakaria Mohammed al-Zaoul was shot in the head in the town of Husan, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said “a suspect hurled Molotov cocktails” at soldiers, who “responded with live fire”.
In a statement, Islamic Jihad claimed Zaoul as a member.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported the military used live fire, tear gas and stun grenades during the clashes with young Palestinians.