By Sardar Khan Niazi
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank on Friday. They shot a 16-year-old boy in the chest near the town of Bethlehem, a report from Palestinian Health Ministry named the victim as Mustafa Sabah.
Israeli forces have conducted near-daily raids across the occupied West Bank for almost a year. In the first week of the current year, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian child during a raid on the northern occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
Israeli forces shot sixteen-year-old Amer Abu Zaytoon in the head on Thursday morning. He is the fourth Palestinian killed this year by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank after more than 170 lost life last year in the territory and occupied East Jerusalem. His death comes after another Palestinian child, 15-year-old Adam Ayyad’s martyrdom by Israeli forces on Tuesday.
Abu Zaytoon was shot dead while he was walking in the camp and came upon the Israeli Special Forces. “It’s hard to know what happened exactly because these things happen at night and in the tight alleyways of the camp,” Nablus-based journalist Bakr Abdelhaq told.
The developments come because of a continuing Israeli military campaign of intensified raids and killings. The United Nations said 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2006.
More than 30 children were among the dead last year, and at least 9,000 other Palestinians were injured. Israeli forces have killed civilians and uninvolved bystanders in targeted assassinations.
In a separate incident on Thursday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank. This year there has been a surge in Israeli military raids and attacks by Israeli settlers. The Israeli military has martyred more than 90 Palestinians since January.
A video circulated on social media showed a soldier firing at Palestinian multiple times, even after he had fallen to the ground. The Palestinian National Liberation Movement confirmed that the Palestinian killed, Ahmed Yaqoub Taha, was a Palestinian security officer.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state, during the 1967 Middle East war. It has since annexed East Jerusalem, and built large settlements there considered illegal by the international community.
During the past year, the Israeli army carried out frequent raids across the occupied West Bank. Under the most far-right government in Israel’s history, sworn in late last year, the raids have escalated, taking a heavy toll on civilians.
Israeli soldiers also shot dead two Palestinians in the second week of April. Local Palestinian sources from Nablus told that the bodies of the two men identified as Mohammed Abu Dhraa and Soud al-Titi were taken by the Israeli military.
Al-Titi was a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces, while Abu Dhraa was a former detainee who spent seven years in an Israeli prison, the sources said.
Israel has been withholding the bodies of Palestinians as a punitive policy for decades. However, human rights groups have said that there has been a significant rise in this practice since 2015.
According to the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, Israel currently withholds at least 105 Palestinian bodies at morgues, an act it calls collective punishment of families who often cannot obtain closure without a burial.
Palestinian mourners gathered for the funeral of a 15-year-old boy shot dead by Israeli forces during a raid in the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, near Jericho in the Jordan Valley. Mohammad Balhan sustained gunshot wounds to his head, chest, and abdomen.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has passionately urged the international community to hold the new Israeli government accountable for its reprehensible crimes defined as apartheid by Amnesty International report.
