Unrest Spreads from West Bank to Gaza as Israeli Troops Kill Six Palestinians
The Latest: West Bank explosion caused by gas canister
October 11, 2015
AP - The latest developments in ongoing violence between Palestinians and Israelis (all times local):
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4:15 p.m.
Israel's
Shin Bet security agency says an explosive device set off by a
Palestinian woman in the West Bank that wounded police officer and the
attacker was a gas canister, not a bomb.
The 31-year-old woman set off the explosion in her vehicle, critically wounding herself and lightly wounding the officer.
It was the first use of an explosive device in the current round of violence, which has mostly consisted of stabbing and shooting attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem, the West Bank and elsewhere.
The
Shin Bet says a police officer motioned for the woman to stop after
noticing her trailing a police car. When the officer spoke to her, she
said "God is greatest" before exploding the gas canister.
The security agency says handwritten letters were found on her person that praised Palestinian "martyrs." It says the woman is a resident of east Jerusalem but lives part of the time in the West Bank.
12:00 p.m.
Israel's prime minister says he is holding consultations to promote sanctions against the Islamic Movement in Israel.
Benjamin
Netanyahu says Sunday that the movement is a part of the "systematic,
untrue incitement" against Israel that has sparked recent violence.
Israel says the group, which runs education and religious services for
Israeli Arabs, has incited violence by spreading lies about Israel's
supposed intentions regarding a sensitive Jerusalem holy site which is
sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu singled out an Arab lawmaker, Hanin Zoabi, who the premier said called on hundreds of thousands of worshippers to ascend to the site to prevent an "Israeli plot of bloodletting of east Jerusalem residents."
Netanyahu says that amounts to clear incitement to violence and has asked the attorney general to open a criminal investigation against Zoabi.
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8:30 a.m.
Israeli police say a Palestinian woman has set off a small explosive in her vehicle in the West Bank, lightly wounding a police officer and critically wounding herself.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says the police officer noticed the woman driving suspiciously Sunday morning and motioned her to stop. She then chanted "God in great" and detonated the explosive.
The
attack marks the first use of explosives in the current round of
violence that has mostly been confined to stabbing and shooting attacks
against Israelis in Jerusalem, the West Bank and elsewhere.
Palestinians
carried out two stabbing attacks in Jerusalem on Saturday before being
shot dead by police, while another two Palestinians were killed near the
border fence with the Gaza Strip, as a weeklong bout of violence showed
no signs of slowing.
___8:00 a.m.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says a pregnant woman and her 2-year-old daughter have been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Ministry
spokesman Ashraf Al-Kidra identified the mother as 30-year-old Noor
Hassan. He said four others were wounded, included Hassan's husband and
son, in the strike in the southern Gaza strip.
The
Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas weapons manufacturing
facilities in response to earlier rocket fire toward Israel.
The
Gaza border has been largely calm since the monthlong Summer 2014 war
between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the
coastal territory.
But after a
week of violence across Israel and the West Bank, protests spread to
Gaza as well in recent days. Nine Palestinians have been killed in
clashes with Israeli forces along the border area.
Israeli air strike kills pregnant woman and toddler as Palestinian unrest spreads
October 10, 2015AFP - An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed a pregnant woman and her toddler and Hamas warned the Jewish state against "foolishness" Sunday as Palestinian unrest spun further toward a full-scale uprising.
After days of unrest elsewhere,
Gaza has been drawn into the violence since Friday, with clashes along
the border leaving nine Palestinians dead, including teenagers, from
Israeli fire.
Overnight, Israel said it targeted "two Hamas weapon manufacturing facilities" after Gaza militants fired two rockets and following attempts by Palestinians to violently cross the border.
One of the rockets had hit an open field in southern Israel and the other was intercepted.
Israel's retaliatory air strikes demolished a house in the northern area of Zeitun, killing Nur Hassan, 30, and her two-year-old daughter Rahaf, Gaza medics said, and trapping three others under the ruins.
Border clashes that broke out Friday came as Hamas's chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, called the overall violence an intifada and urged further unrest.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, the enclave hit by three wars with Israel since 2008, remains deeply divided from president Mahmud Abbas's West Bank-based Fatah.
It was unclear whether Hamas or another group fired the rockets. Salafists claiming links to the Islamic State group have claimed recent rocket fire from Gaza, but Israel holds Hamas responsible for all such acts.
In response to the air strike, a Hamas spokesman said "this shows the occupation's desire to escalate."
- Explosion near Jerusalem -"We warn the occupation against continuing this foolishness," said Sami Abu Zuhri.
Also on Sunday morning, Israeli security forces said they foiled an attack when an explosion seriously wounded a Palestinian woman and lightly injured an Israeli policeman.
The policeman had spotted a "suspicious" vehicle close to the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem and ordered the 31-year-old woman to stop.
She exited the car and the explosives inside it detonated, said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld.
The woman, from Jericho in the West Bank, shouted "God is great" in Arabic before the explosion went off.
Photos distributed by police indicated the blast was not especially powerful, with the car still intact."It was a female terrorist that intended to make her way into Jerusalem this morning," said Rosenfeld, declining to provide further details.
Explosives had not been used in the week of violence that has led to an Israeli crackdown, with a wave of stabbings sparking fear among Israelis.
A settler couple was also shot dead in the West Bank on October 1 in front of their children and rioting has shaken annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas have sought to avoid an escalation, frustrated Palestinian youths have defied efforts to restore calm.
- 'Too many victims' -
The office of French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday that "everything must be done to... end this cycle (of violence) which has already caused too many victims".
Both Abbas and Netanyahu have spoken with US Secretary of State John Kerry, each putting the blame for the situation on the other.
Netanyahu said he told Kerry he expected the Palestinian Authority to stop its "wild and mendacious incitement, which is causing the current wave of terrorism".
Abbas said he reiterated the need for Israeli authorities to stop giving cover to "settler provocations, carried out under the army's protection".
Rioting has seen
Palestinians throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli forces, who have
responded with live fire, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades.
Clashes rocked West Bank cities Ramallah and Bethlehem on Saturday and there were also more stabbing attacks.
On Saturday morning, a Palestinian teenager stabbed and wounded two ultra-Orthodox Jews, aged 62 and 65, outside the Old City's Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, police and medics said.
Police said they shot and killed 16-year-old Ishak Badran, of Kafr Aqeb in east Jerusalem.
Hours later in the same area, a 19-year-old also from Kafr Aqeb stabbed two police officers before himself being shot dead.
The stabbing victims in the second attack were in a "moderate" condition, medics said, with a third seriously wounded after being shot by another officer targeting the assailant.
Fourteen stabbing attacks have targeted Jews since October 3, when a Palestinian murdered two Israelis in the Old City.
One revenge stabbing has occurred, with a 17-year-old Jew in the southern Israeli city of Dimona wounding two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis on Friday.
Netanyahu quickly condemned that attack, a sign of concerns that it could trigger further violence.
Abbas has spoken out against violence and in favour of "peaceful, popular resistance", but many Palestinian youths are frustrated with his leadership.
Netanyahu has ordered the emergency call-up of reserve border police companies to reinforce officers in east Jerusalem and throughout Israel.
Unrest spreads to Gaza as Israeli troops kill six Palestinians
October 9, 2014
AFP - A week of violence between Israelis and
Palestinians spread to the Gaza Strip Saturday, with Israeli troops
killing six in clashes on the border and Islamist movement Hamas calling
for more unrest.
A fresh wave of stabbings also hit Israel and the West Bank, including a revenge attack by a Jewish suspect that wounded two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis.
A fresh wave of stabbings also hit Israel and the West Bank, including a revenge attack by a Jewish suspect that wounded two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis.
The Gaza Strip had been mainly calm as unrest has shaken annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank in recent days.
But a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave hit southern Israel early Saturday, causing no damages or injuries, just hours after clashes broke out east of Gaza City and Khan Yunis along the border with the Jewish state.
The Israeli army said there had been on Friday "multiple violent attempts to storm the border fence" and "a thousand rioters infiltrated the buffer zone," throwing a "grenade, rocks and rolled burning tyres" at the soldiers."
"After firing warning shots, forces on site responded with fire towards main instigators in order to prevent their advance and disperse the riot," a statement from the army read.Six Palestinians were killed, including a 15-year-old, and 80 wounded, according to medics.
It was the deadliest clash in Gaza since the summer 2014 war with Israel.
Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary general Saeb Erakat accused Netanyahu and his government of "committing a new massacre of Palestinians" in Gaza.
The clashes came as Hamas's chief in Gaza called the spreading violence an intifada, or uprising, and urged further unrest.
In a sermon for weekly Muslim prayers at a mosque in Gaza City, Ismail Haniya said "we are calling for the strengthening and increasing of the intifada".
- Gaza 'ready for confrontation' -
"It is the only path that will lead to liberation," he said. "Gaza will fulfil its role in the Jerusalem intifada and it is more than ready for confrontation."In a number of Arab towns in Israel's north, masked youths blocked roads with burning tyres and hurled fire bombs and stones at police, who arrested eight suspects altogether.
Stabbing attacks in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel itself along with rioting have raised fears of a third Palestinian intifada, following a first that began in 1987 and a second in 2000.
Those two conflicts cost the lives of some 5,000 Palestinians and around 1,100 Israelis.
Hamas rules Gaza, squeezed between Egypt and Israel and separated from the West Bank. It remains deeply divided from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party.
The enclave has been hit by three wars with Israel since 2008. A 50-day conflict between Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel in the summer of 2014 left more than 2,200 people in the territory dead and 100,000 homeless.
Friday's stabbings included one by a 17-year-old Jew in the southern Israeli city of Dimona that lightly or moderately wounded two Palestinians and two Arab Israelis.
This was the first such incident against Palestinians after multiple stabbings that have targeted Jews since Saturday, killing two.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly condemned the attack by the Jewish youth, a sign of concerns that it could trigger further violence.
- 'Acts of terror' -
Attacks also continued against Israelis and Jews, with a Palestinian stabbing and lightly wounding a policeman near a West Bank settlement before being shot dead by the victim.
A Jewish 16-year-old was slightly hurt in a stabbing in Jerusalem by an 18-year-old Palestinian suspect, who was arrested.
And an Arab Israeli woman was shot and wounded when she tried to stab a security guard at a bus station in the northern Israeli town of Afula, police said.
There have been 13 stabbings since Saturday, including the revenge assault. Five of the alleged attackers have been killed.
Friday's escalation came as Israeli security forces sought to prevent the further spread of Palestinian unrest.
Abbas has spoken out against violence and in favour of "peaceful, popular resistance", but many youths are frustrated with his leadership as well as Israel's government.
In Washington, the US State Department said it regards the stabbings and shootings of Israelis by Palestinians as "acts of terror", though spokesman John Kirby would not be drawn on whether the attack by the Jewish teenager was also terrorism.
Fresh clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces broke out Friday in various parts of east Jerusalem and the West Bank, including near Ramallah after the funeral of Mohannad Halabi, a 19-year-old killed after allegedly stabbing two Jews to death in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday.
During clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem a Palestinian was seriously wounded by police gunfire, after shooting at forces, police said in a statement. He was taken to a nearby hospital.
"We're currently in a spiral that appears to be heading toward escalation," said Ido Zelkovitz, an expert on Palestinian history at Haifa University.Related:
"The current clashes are being led by a young generation with no collective memory of the second intifada, which created very strong deterrence among the Palestinian leadership."
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