RAMALLAH: Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank early on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, with the army saying troops opened fire after the suspect approached them with explosives.

The Palestinian health ministry said Mahmud Majid Mohammed al-Aidi, 17, died from “critical wounds he sustained by live occupation (Israeli) bullets to the head” at Al-Fara refugee camp north of Nablus.

The army said Israeli troops carried out “counterterrorism operations” in several West Bank towns and cities early on Tuesday.

“During activity in the Al-Fara camp, a Palestinian suspect approached the soldiers with an explosive device. The soldiers responded with live fire. A hit was identified,” the army said, without commenting specifically on Aidi’s reported death.

Camp official Assem Mansour said: “The Israeli army entered the camp from various directions after midnight, and surrounded the house of a wanted person.”

The ministry separately announced the death of Haroun Rasmi Yussuf Abu Aram, 25, from injuries sustained “two years ago from live bullets of the occupation in Masafer Yatta,” an area of the West Bank where many Palestinians have been evicted from their homes by the army, who have declared it a military zone.

On Monday, Asil Sawaed, a 22-year-old Israeli policeman from a Bedouin town in northern Israel, was killed after being stabbed by an assailant and inadvertently shot by an armed guard who intended to hit the attacker but missed.

Israel soldier jailed

Israel’s military jailed for 10 days a soldier who assaulted a Palestinian activist as he was speaking to a US journalist, but gave an account of the incident that was disputed by the interviewer.

The incident in Hebron also set off an internal Israeli flap, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — one of several hundred hardline Jewish settlers living in the flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank — voicing full support for the soldier.

In a video posted on Twitter by Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker magazine, the soldier grabs Issa Amro by his jacket and neck and throws him to the ground. He then lands a kick to Amro’s backside before being pulled away by another soldier.

“I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this,” Wright tweeted.

The military said the event began when the soldier, guarding a military post, asked the Palestinian who approached the post to step away.

“In response, the Palestinian began recording and cursing the soldier. A verbal confrontation followed, which soon became a physical confrontation, during which the soldier hit the Palestinian,” it said in a statement. “As the video shows, the soldier did not act as expected and did not follow the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) code of conduct.”

However, in a Twitter response, Wright said: “The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) misrepresented what led to this. The soldier initiated the encounter, Amro did not curse him only asked to call his commander. Nothing to

justify the violent assault that followed.” The military declined to comment further.

Ben-Gvir called the soldier’s sentence — which included a suspension from active combat duties — a “disgrace” and described Amro as an anarchist.

Amro, described by Wright as a peace activist, accused the minister of trying to get him killed. “The soldiers are listening to @itamarbengvir not to their military occupation commanders,” Amro tweeted.

West Bank settlements

In Berlin, the foreign ministers of five Western powers said on Tuesday they were “deeply troubled” by the Israeli government’s decision to legalise nine West Bank settlements and build thousands of new units.

The ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States said: “We strongly oppose these unilateral actions which will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution”.

They underlined their backing for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, which must be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties”. “We continue to closely monitor developments on the ground which impact the viability of the two-state solution and stability in the region at large,” they added.

Israel’s security cabinet had announced on Sunday that it would legalise nine settlements in the occupied West Bank following a series of attacks in east Jerusalem, including one that killed three Israelis.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who signed up to Tuesday’s statement, had on Monday already criticised Israel’s plans on advancing settlements.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2023