An Israeli policeman died and a Jewish teenager was injured Monday in East Jerusalem in two stabbing attacks carried out by two Palestinian teenagers, according to Israeli police.
The new attacks come amid fears of an uncontrollable unleashing of violence as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has escalated sharply since the start of the year, and after nightly clashes in Gaza and the West Bank left one dead, Palestinian .
In the late afternoon, an Israeli policeman was injured during a routine check on a bus at the entrance to the Shuafat Palestinian refugee camp, Israeli police said. The policeman was stabbed by a teenager and hit by a bullet fired by a civilian in the direction of the assailant but having missed its target. The policeman, a 22-year-old Bedouin, died of his injuries, police said.
The 13-year-old boy from Chouafat was arrested. The police announced that they had arrested three members of his family and had, during an operation in Chouafat, fired at a suspicious car, injuring its driver.
Earlier, a 17-year-old Jewish boy was lightly injured in a stabbing attack by a 14-year-old Palestinian in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to police sources. The attacker, also from Shuafat, in the eastern part of Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, was arrested.
Palestinian killed
Claiming to act “in response” to a rocket fired on Saturday evening from the Gaza Strip and destroyed by the Israeli anti-aircraft defense, the Israeli army announced that it had struck during the night “an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacture rockets belonging” to Hamas, the ruling Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza.
According to the Hamas Interior Ministry in Gaza, the night strikes caused “extensive damage to four houses, a wedding hall and a gas station” near the military camp targeted by the Israeli missiles, in the south-west. west of Gaza City. no casualties were reported.
In Nablus, a city in the north of the occupied West Bank, where the army has been increasing for almost a year what it presents as night “anti-terrorist” operations in search of “suspects”, the Israeli forces carried out a new raid overnight from Sunday to Monday. A 21-year-old Palestinian was killed in an exchange of fire during the incursion, during which soldiers arrested five people.
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 47 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians, including minors), nine civilians (including three minors) and an Israeli policeman and a Ukrainian, according to an AFP count made from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
Antony Blinken criticizes the expansion of settlements
In a move likely to heighten tensions, Israel’s security cabinet announced on Sunday that it would legalize nine Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The cabinet presented the measure as a response to a series of Palestinian attacks in East Jerusalem, including one that killed three people on Friday.
These settlements were previously illegal under Israeli law because established without the approval of the government, but for the UN any Jewish settlement enterprise in the West Bank is illegal under international law. The security cabinet also said it intended to announce a new round of housing construction for settlers in the West Bank.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken said on Monday that he was “deeply concerned” by these two decisions, denouncing “such unilateral measures, which exacerbate tensions and undermine efforts to negotiate a two-state solution”.