Israeli forces have shot dead a 19-year-old youth during a raid near Jenin, marking the second killing in the occupied West Bank in two days as Israel accelerates its annexation plans in the territory.
The military confirmed the killing of the young man, identified as Ahmed Jihad Barahmeh, in the town of Anzah on Wednesday, claiming its forces shot him after he “threw an explosive device” at them.
The victim was reportedly picked up by a Palestine Red Crescent Society crew after being shot in the chest, but later died of his wounds.
Barahmeh’s death follows the killing of Saeed Murad al-Nasan, who was 20, by armed settlers in the village of al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah, as reported by Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday.
Israeli forces have carried out near-daily raids in the West Bank since the start of their war on Gaza, with a sharp escalation of violence this month following Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to annex the territory.
Since Israel began its genocidal war, it has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers have also been emboldened, rampaging in Palestinian communities with impunity, backed by the military, attacking and killing residents and burning property and olive groves. There is rarely, if ever, any legal recourse for Palestinians.
Two Israeli settlers assaulted the mayor of Beita, a Palestinian town near Nablus, in the West Bank, on Wednesday, according to the Wafa news agency. The settlers attacked Mahmoud Barham and a municipal official, damaging their car and leaving both men with bruises.
Attacks by Israeli settlers have injured 540 Palestinians in the West Bank this year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu told Al Jazeera that the situation for Palestinians in the occupied territory was “getting worse” and that it was high time the international community acted to stop Israel’s violence.
Israel, she said, had effectively killed the two-state solution with its fragmentation of Palestinian land through its illegal settlement programme, a situation that could only be undone through “political will”.
“It’s not enough to condemn, it’s now time for the world to be active,” she said, calling on countries to follow up on the recent wave of recognition of the state of Palestine with arms embargoes against Israel.
While raiding multiple towns in the West Bank, Israel ordered the indefinite closure of the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge, the only gateway for goods and people between the territory and Jordan.
Aida Touma-Sliman, a left-wing Palestinian member of the Knesset, accused Israel of exacting “petty revenge” for many nations endorsing a Palestinian state, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “destructive and devastating policies”.
“Netanyahu threatens further steps in the near future. The nations of the world who finally understood the danger of the transfer and extermination government must act immediately to block Netanyahu’s destructive and devastating policies,” she said on X.
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report on Tuesday that accused Israel of “systematically” destroying civil life across Gaza while demonstrating a “clear intent” to forcibly remove Palestinians from the West Bank, effectively preventing any possibility of a future Palestinian state.
