RAMALLAH: Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians and arrested a fourth during a clash at dawn on Sunday in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the killing of Jihad Al-Shami, 24, Uday Al-Shami, 22, and Mohammed Al-Dbeek, 18.
The Israel Defense Forces opened fire on the vehicle they were traveling in near the Surra military checkpoint, southwest of Nablus.
Ibrahim Awartani was arrested and two Palestinian workers were wounded by shrapnel from the incident.
IDF personnel later entered a number of shops in the town of Surra and confiscated surveillance camera recordings of the killings.
The Nablus governorate declared a day of mourning for the victims whose deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers during the recent upheaval to 84, including 15 children and one woman.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement said the “heinous crime” confirmed that the Israeli government was seeking to escalate the situation to export its internal crises.
“The policy of so-called ‘mowing the lawn’ adopted by the occupation will not work, nor will it intimidate our people, who will continue their struggle until the establishment of their independent, sovereign state, with Jerusalem as its capital,” said Fatah in a statement.
Rawhi Fattouh, head of the Palestinian National Council, said the occupation forces had erected “death barriers” at the entrances to Palestinian towns “to kill citizens in cold blood under false pretexts and allegations to justify daily field executions.”
This proved the “bloody mentality of the occupation forces,” he added, saying Israeli forces appeared to have explicit instructions for “physical liquidation” of people from their political bosses, he said.
The Lions’ Den Palestinian militant group said in a statement that the “blood of the three young men would be a curse on the occupation and fuel for the escalation of the great intifada in the West Bank.”
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, told Arab News: “This is a dangerous escalation that means that Israel has returned to the policy of assassinations adopted by its former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and this poses a great danger to the lives of the Palestinians and will lead to more violence.”
Tayseer Nasrallah, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Nablus, told Arab News that the IDF was using its maximum military capabilities against young, inexperienced boys to score an imaginary victory over them.
Nasrallah described the situation in Nablus as very dangerous and said the Palestinians would not likely go to the Sharm El-Sheikh meeting on March 17 with the Israelis, Americans, Jordanians and Egyptians, as a continuation of February’s Aqaba summit.
Sabri Saidam, deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “committing crimes against the Palestinian people to solve the internal Israeli crisis and quell demonstrations and protests against his government.”
Saidam said the successive attacks on the Palestinians were an attempt by the Netanyahu government to contain Israel’s internal problems.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government has postponed legitimizing the illegal Evyatar settler outpost near Nablus until after the holy month of Ramadan, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
The decision also delayed the demolition of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar and the expulsion of its residents.
The village is surrounded by Israeli settlements and is located within the area targeted by the Israeli authorities to implement the E1 settlement project, which includes the establishment of thousands of settlement units to link the Ma’ale Adumim settlement with Jerusalem, isolating the city from its surroundings and dividing the West Bank into two parts, eliminating the option of a two-state solution, according to Palestinian observers.
Residents have been living in a state of anxiety and anticipation for years, fearing the implementation of the demolition and eviction process.
