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Four Palestinians were killed on Thursday, November 3, in clashes with Israeli forces in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. The violence came as the siege on the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank was lifted. The city had been besieged by the army for three weeks while the Israeli troops multiplied the incursions.
Four Palestinians were killed on Thursday, November 3, at the hands of Israeli forces in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, amid increased violence related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Israeli army announced the launch of an operation in Jenin, a stronghold of the armed groups in the north of the West Bank.
“There are two martyrs killed by gunfire from the occupation forces and four people injured…,” the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
According to our correspondents in Jerusalem, Janira Gómez and Federico Cue, one of the two people killed was 14-year-old Mohammed Khalouf, killed for no apparent reason. The second was Farouk Salameh, 28 years old and commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (JIP).
The second Palestinian killed in Jenin in less than an hour is Mohammad Khlouf, only 14 years old.
195 Palestinians have been killed in ten months.
Welcome to the slaughterhouse. pic.twitter.com/AKhsB9LXwP
— Mariam Barghouti مريم البرغوثي (@MariamBarghouti) November 3, 2022
Earlier, in the Old City of Jerusalem, a 20-year-old Palestinian was killed after stabbing three Israeli policemen who had stopped him for inspection.
Before dawn, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in clashes in Beit Duqu, a town north of Jerusalem. Daoud Mahmoud Khalil Rayan, 42, was shot in the heart while walking to pay tribute to a Palestinian killed the day before by Israeli forces.
Lifting of the siege on Nablus
Following a series of attacks in March and April, the Israeli army carried out more than 2,000 raids in the West Bank, especially in the Jenin and Nablus areas. More than 120 Palestinians were killed in the ensuing clashes.
According to the UN, this is the highest death toll in seven years and the second highest since the end of the second intifada; the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
The violence took a turn in early October following the killing of an Israeli soldier by a group of local fighters called Areen Al-Oussoud, the “Lions’ Den”. Since then, the army besieged the city of Nablus and multiplied its raids, which caused the death of dozens of people, including the leader of the group of fighters, Wadih Al-Houh.
But this Thursday, the army said in a statement that, after assessing the situation, “it was decided to lift the general closure imposed on the entrances and exits of Nablus.”
Nablus and Jenin in the crosshairs of the Israeli army
The young Areen Al-Oussoud movement, very popular in the West Bank, has a few dozen armed men and declares itself nationalist. It is made up of militants from the Islamic Jihad, rebels from the Al Fatah movement and Hamas; all of them united in the fight against the occupier.
On October 23, one of its members was killed in Nablus in a motorcycle explosion. A targeted assassination; method that the army has not used in the West Bank since the second Intifada. But in fact, according to several observers, Nablus has been experiencing an intifada-like uprising since October.
Millions of Palestinians living under draconian Israeli military rule for more than half a century have no say over the government that largely controls their lives.
This is apartheid. https://t.co/40YhWs3Ojt
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) November 1, 2022
Defense Minister Benny Gantz declared that all members of the “Lion’s Den” would end up in jail or be killed.
The group, made up of young activists, most of them between the ages of 17 and 22 and very active on social media, has been targeted by Israeli forces since at least the fall of 2021. Israel also knows that this group He is closely linked to the activists in the Jenin refugee camp, which has also been in a state of insurrection since May 2021.
This violence comes two days after the Israeli legislative elections that should allow Benjamin Netanyahu to regain power thanks to his allies; religious parties and those of the extreme right.
Despite the growing tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the legislative elections, which were the fifth organized by the Hebrew state in less than three years, were characterized by the absence of debate on the Palestinian issue.
According to observers, low-intensity conflict no longer appears to be a priority for the Israelis, while on the Palestinian side, the two-state solution promised for thirty years appears to have stalled.
Afp, local media
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