Monitoring Desk
JERUSALEM: The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man early on Thursday during a raid in the occupied West Bank, the latest bloodshed in months of violence in the occupied region.
Since early last year, the military, which has been carrying out nightly raids in the territory, said soldiers operating in the Qalandiya camp were being targeted with rocks and cement blocks from rooftops above and retaliated with live fire. The man killed was identified as Samir Aslan, 41.
The incident came a day after two Palestinians were shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank territory on Wednesday, one during an Israeli forces arrest raid in the north of the territory and another after stabbing and injuring an Israeli man in a southern settlement.
Israel says raid meant to destroy militants
Israel says they are meant to destroy militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as the further entrenchment of Israel’s open-ended occupation of land they want for their future state.
The raids triggered tensions and prompted another wave of Palestinian attacks that killed 10 Israelis in the fall. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2022, making it the deadliest year since 2004.
The violence comes as Israel’s new ultra-Orthodox and the ultranationalist government is charting its legislative agenda.
Israel occupied the West Bank territory in the 1967 Middle East war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories the Palestinians want for their future independent state. Israel has since settled 500,000 people in around 130 settlements across the West Bank, which the Palestinians and much of the international community view as an obstacle to peace.
