SALEM, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man on Sunday as he attempted to enter Jerusalem by climbing over a barrier separating the city from the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah identified the man as Imad Haroun Ashtiyeh, 26, saying he was killed by Israeli gunfire near the town of Al-Ram, north of Jerusalem.
Ashtiyeh, a construction worker from the village of Salem near Nablus, had attempted to climb the barrier at Al-Ram with a few other men to reach the Israeli city of Tel Aviv for work, said Omer, a relative who gave only his first name.
“But then he was shot while attempting to climb over,” Omer said.
FASTFACT
The Palestinian Authority said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man seeking work while crossing the annexation and apartheid wall.
An AFP journalist saw Ashtiyeh’s corpse shrouded in a Palestinian flag at the Ramallah medical complex, his relatives weeping over his body.
The Palestinian Authority’s press office wrote on X that “Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian man seeking work while crossing the annexation and apartheid wall.”
Al-Ram, located near the Qalandiya checkpoint, is separated from Jerusalem by a section of the barrier reinforced with barbed wire.
Israeli security officials say a significant number of Palestinians from the West Bank attempt to enter Israel illegally, often by climbing over the barrier.
They are driven largely by economic hardship and the loss of work permits since the Hamas assault that sparked the Gaza war in October 2023, Palestinian officials say.
Most of them are arrested, while some have died or been injured fleeing from Israeli forces, Palestinian officials say.
Ashtiyeh is the fifth Palestinian killed trying to cross into Israel this year, and the 52nd since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.
Israel began building the barrier at the height of the second Palestinian intifada that erupted in 2002, saying it was needed to maintain security amid suicide bombings in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities. The barrier cuts into many parts of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, and Palestinians see it as a land grab and a de facto border, illegal under international law.
Israel maintains tight restrictions on the movement of the West Bank’s roughly 3 million residents, who require special permits to cross checkpoints into East Jerusalem and Israel.
Violence has sharply escalated in the Palestinian territory since the Gaza war began.
At least 1,075 Palestinians — both militants and civilians — have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since October 2023, according to AFP figures based on Palestinian Health Ministry data.
In the same period, at least 46 Israelis, including soldiers and civilians, have been killed in attacks or military operations in the West Bank, official Israeli figures show.
