NABLUS: Israeli forces on Tuesday shot dead a Hamas member suspected of killing a rabbi as two deadly attacks against Israeli settlers in a month increased tensions in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian suspect in the murder of the rabbi on January 9 was shot dead in a pre-dawn raid hours after another Israeli was killed in a stabbing in the West Bank.
Several hundred mourners attended the funeral on Tuesday for Itamar Ben Gal, the 29-year-old man killed a day earlier who was also a rabbi.
There was no indication of a direct link between the two attacks, with violence common in the West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli settlers or security forces.
Islamist movement Hamas said the suspect killed overnight was a member of its armed wing. The 19-year-old believed to have committed Monday’s stabbing remained at large.
“The security forces will catch whoever tries to attack Israeli citizens and we will deal with them to the fullest extent of the law,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
Both attacks have led to Israeli calls for more settlement building in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation for more than 50 years.
Earlier this week in response to the rabbi’s murder on January 9, Israel’s government in a rare move decided to “legalize” the rogue West Bank outpost where he lived, Havat Gilad, essentially creating a new settlement.
There were further calls for more settlement construction at Tuesday’s funeral for Ben Gal held at the Har Bracha settlement where he lived, Israeli media reported.
The overnight raid occurred in the village of Yamoun near Jenin, where the 22-year-old suspect, Ahmad Jarrar, was said to be hiding.
It came after a weeks-long manhunt for Jarrar, the son of a Hamas figure killed by Israeli forces during the second intifada of the early 2000s.
Beginning late Monday and into early Tuesday, dozens of Israeli army jeeps entered Yamoun and besieged a part of the town. Heavy clashes broke out with live fire, according to a Palestinian security source.
Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said that “during the attempted arrest, the terrorist came out of a building where he was hiding armed.
“Security forces fired in his direction. An M-16 assault rifle and a bag containing explosives were found near his body,” it said.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, claimed Jarrar as a member and welcomed the attack on January 9 that saw Raziel Shevach, 35, shot dead.
It said a “Qassam bullet” was responsible for the murder, though it was unclear if the Hamas leadership was claiming direct responsibility for the attack or whether the cell acted on its own.
Israeli forces had been hunting for the assailants since the murder, with roadblocks and checkpoints set up following the attack.
Two Palestinians were killed during earlier raids which Israeli security services said were launched to find Shevach’s killers.
Monday’s stabbing occurred near the major Israeli settlement of Ariel. A video published online showed Ben Gal waiting for a bus as the assailant crosses the road and stabs him in the chest.
The assailant was identified in Israeli media as the son of an Arab Israeli woman and a Palestinian father from the West Bank city of Nablus.
Speaking with her identity obscured, his mother told Israel’s Channel 10 that she disagreed with his actions and hoped he would turn himself in, but also said she had not seen him for three years.
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who has been a supporter of settlement building in the past, said on Twitter he was praying for Ben Gal’s family.
“Twenty years ago I gave an ambulance to Har Bracha hoping it would be used to deliver healthy babies,” he wrote.
“Instead, a man from Har Bracha was just murdered by a terrorist, leaving behind a wife and four children. Palestinian ‘leaders’ have praised the killer.”
Israeli settlements are seen as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.
Israel faced sharp criticism from the administration of former US president Barack Obama over settlement construction, but that has not been the case with Trump’s White House.
Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on December 6 was also hailed by Israelis, while deeply angering the Palestinians who see the city as their capital as well.
Twenty-one Palestinians have been killed since Trump’s announcement, most in clashes with Israeli forces. Two Israelis have been killed in that timeframe.
Israel kills Hamas member suspected of murdering rabbi
Israel kills Hamas member suspected of murdering rabbi
For Syria’s Kurds, dream of autonomy fades under Damascus deal
- “We made many sacrifices,” said Mohammed, spokesperson for the YPJ
- The YPJ is part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that spearheaded the fight against Daesh
HASAKEH, Syria: At a military base in northeast Syria, Roksan Mohammed recalled joining the battle against Daesh group militants. Now her all-woman fighting unit is at risk after a deal with Damascus ended the Kurds’ de facto autonomy.
“We made many sacrifices,” said Mohammed, spokesperson for the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), who stood with a gun slung over her shoulder.
“Thousands of martyrs shed their blood, including many of my close comrades,” the 37-year-old added.
The YPJ is part of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that spearheaded the fight against Daesh in Syria with the help of a US-led coalition, leading to the militants’ territorial defeat in the country in 2019.
But Kurdish forces now find themselves abandoned by their ally as Washington draws closer to the new Syrian government of President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad in 2024.
Under military pressure from Damascus, the Kurds agreed to a deal last month on integrating their forces and civilian institutions into the state. It did not mention the YPJ.
“The fate of female Kurdish fighters seems to be one of the biggest problems,” Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based analyst and expert on the Kurds, told AFP.
“Kurds will not accept the dissolution of the YPJ,” he added, as “in their political system, women have an elevated status.”
“Each official position is safeguarded with a co-chair system which dictates that one must be a woman,” he said.
YPJ fighter Mohammed remained defiant.
“Our fight will continue... we will intensify our struggle with this government that does not accept women.”
- Disagreements -
Under the deal, Syria’s Kurds must surrender oil fields, which have been the main source of revenue for their autonomous administration.
They must also hand over border checkpoints and an airport, while fighters are to be integrated into the army in four brigades.
However, the two sides disagree on the deal’s interpretation.
Damascus “understands integration as absorption, yet Kurds see it as joining the new state with their own identity and priorities,” Civiroglu said.
“The issue of self-rule is one of the major problems between the two sides.”
For the Kurds, the agreement all but ended their de facto autonomy in Syria, which they established during the country’s 13-year civil war.
“Previously, our regions were semi-autonomous from Syria,” said Hussein Al-Issa, 50, who works for the Kurdish administration’s education department.
But “this is no longer the case,” he said, after the government drove Kurdish forces from wide areas of northeast Syria in January and the two sides agreed to the deal.
“Coupled with the loss of territory over the past month, the January 30 agreement appears to spell the end for Kurdish ambitions to establish a federal or decentralized system in Syria,” said Winthrop Rodgers, an associate fellow at Chatham House.
The decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration “not to intervene was a key factor, along with Arab and tribal defections from the SDF,” he added.
- ‘Not a single bullet’ -
The Kurds have not hidden their bitterness toward Washington, under whose leadership the anti-militant coalition had positioned bases in Kurdish-controlled areas.
A source with knowledge of the matter told AFP that during a meeting in Iraqi Kurdistan last month, US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack told SDF chief Mazloum Abdi that the United States “will not fire a single bullet against Damascus” for the Kurds.
Kurdish education department worker Issa said the US abandonment was “a major blow to the Kurds.”
“Their interests with us ended after we finished fighting Daesh,” he said.
He added that Turkiye, an ally of Washington and Damascus, had “applied pressure” to end the Kurds’ autonomy.
Barrack, who closely followed the negotiations, said last month that the SDF’s original purpose in fighting Daesh had “largely expired” after Syria joined the anti- Daesh coalition.
- Defections -
Sharaa is intent on extending the state’s authority across the country.
In early January, after a previous deal with the Kurds stalled for months, he went on the offensive, with government forces clashing with Kurdish fighters in parts of Aleppo province before pushing eastwards.
But he avoided the bloodshed that tarnished the early months of his rule, when hundreds of members of the Alawite minority were massacred on the coast in March, and after deadly clashes erupted with the Druze in the south in July.
A source close to Damascus told AFP that “authorities coordinated with Arab clans from SDF-controlled areas months prior to the offensive,” in order to secure their support and ensure government forces’ “entry into the region without bloodshed.”
Arab personnel had made up around half of the SDF’s 100,000 fighters.
Their sudden defection forced the SDF to withdraw from the Arab-majority provinces of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor with little to no fighting and to retreat to Kurdish areas.
- ‘No rights’ -
Sharaa issued a decree last month on Kurdish national rights, including the recognition of Kurdish as an official language for the first time since Syria’s independence in 1946.
The minority, around two million of Syria’s 20 million people, suffered decades of oppression under the Assad family’s rule.
“We lived under a political system that had no culture, no language and no political or social rights... we were deprived of all of them,” said Roksan Mohammed.
Issa, who teaches Kurdish, said he feared they would lose their autonomous administration’s hard-won gains.
“There is great fear for our children who have been doing their lessons in Kurdish for years,” he said.
“We do not know what their fate will be.”
