Occupied Jerusalem: The Israeli regime shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank on Friday claiming that he tried to stab an Israeli.
Five people were wounded in the incident at an Israeli paramilitary police checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus and a light rail station in East Jerusalem, ambulance officials said.
There were also violent clashes with occupation troops on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Nine Palestinian demonstrators were wounded by rubber-coated steel bullets, Palestinian medics said. Four medics were pepper-sprayed.
A Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli occupation paramilitary police officer near Ramallah before fleeing, Israeli media reported. He was pursued by a military vehicle and run over, Ynet news agency reported. The extent of his injuries was not immediately clear.
This month’s welter of violence, the worst since the 2014 Gaza war, has arisen in part from religious and political tensions over the Al Haram Al Sharif in occupied Jerusalem’s walled Old City that is Islam’s third holiest site.
A growing number of incursions by religious Jews have stirred Palestinian allegations that Israel is violating a status quo under which Jewish prayer there is banned.
Since the latest unrest began on October 1, at least 63 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israelis. Of those, 36 were alleged to be assailants armed mainly with knives, Israel said, while others were shot during violent anti-Israel protests. Many were teens.
Nine Israelis have been killed in stabbings and shootings. (An Israeli man and an Eritrean migrant have also been shot dead by occupation troops after being mistaken for Palestinians). On Friday, two Palestinians used a motorcycle to reach an Israeli paramilitary police checkpoint at a junction near a Jewish colony outside Nablus, dismounted and rushed at the troopers with knives drawn, a police spokeswoman said.
They lightly wounded one policeman before being shot by a policewoman at the scene, the spokeswoman said. One of the Palestinians was killed and the other critically wounded.
Palestinian ambulances took the wounded man to a hospital.
In the second incident, a Palestinian was shot and critically wounded by security guards after allegedly carrying out a knife attack at a railway station near occupied Jerusalem’s Old City, medical officials and police said.
They said two people, believed to be Israelis, were wounded in the incident. One was stabbed and another was shot, having been hit by gunfire directed at the assailant, they said.
On Friday, Palestinians in Hebron said Israel had announced it would declare the area around the cave compound a “closed military zone” after the weekly Muslim prayers.
Asked about this, the Israeli military released a statement saying only that “several precautionary measures were taken in order to contain potential attacks in the future and maintain the safety and well being of Israelis” in Hebron, where there is a small Jewish colony.
On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was expected to meet with the prosecutor of the world’s only permanent war crimes court, Palestinian officials said.
It was Abbas’s first meeting with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court since the Palestinian National Authority joined the tribunal in January, an official with the Palestinian mission in The Hague said.
Abbas, who is in the Netherlands as part of a European tour, would visit ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda “in the context of the grave Israeli escalation in occupied Palestine,” the official said, asking not to be identified.
There was no immediate confirmation from the ICC that Bensouda was meeting with Abbas.
To Israel’s fury, the Palestinians have formally asked the ICC to investigate the regime for alleged war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed.
Bensouda has officially opened a preliminary inquiry into the Palestinian allegations to see whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a more formal investigation.
