ISRAELI SETTLERS ATTACK PALESTINIANS
A Palestinian man was killed near a settlement in the West Bank overnight Saturday, and Israeli settlers carried out dozens of attacks targeting Palestinians across the occupied territory, according to Palestinian media and officials, as violence showed no sign of abating on the eve of a trip to the region by America’s top diplomat.
The Israeli army said that the Palestinian man killed late Saturday was seen outside Kdumim, a settlement in the northern West Bank, “armed with a handgun ... and was neutralized by the community’s civilian security team.” Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, identified the man as Karam Ali Salman, 18, a resident of Qusin village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The report said he was fatally shot by an armed Israeli settler in circumstances that remained “unclear.”
Wafa said at least 144 Israeli settler attacks — some minor rock-throwing incidents, others more violent — were reported on Saturday across the West Bank, the occupied territory that Palestinians envision as part of their future state. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities on Sunday began demolishing Palestinian homes in retaliation for Friday’s synagogue shooting and pledged an expansion of West Bank settlements.
In Masafer Yatta, in the south, settlers assaulted a Palestinian man; in two villages near Ramallah, masked attackers torched a house and a car and threw stones.
Outside the northern village of Akraba, dozens of settlers established a new, unauthorized outpost. They attacked the Palestinian landowners who arrived at the scene, then injured a medic who came to assist, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. The Israeli military did not intervene, the report added.
There has been an “unprecedented increase in the frequency of terror attacks against Palestinian citizens and their property,” said Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official.
Early Sunday, Israeli security forces blocked access to the family home of the
Palestinian gunman who killed seven people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem on Friday night, sealing doors and windows. Authorities promised that the house would soon be demolished.
The shooter, who was killed at the scene, has been identified as 21-year-old Khairi Alqam. Alqam was named after his grandfather, who was fatally stabbed in 1998, allegedly by a Jewish attacker who was arrested but never charged, Israeli news site Ynet reported.