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Violence in the occupied West Bank persisted Saturday with Israelis attacking Palestinian residents and a Palestinian shooter killed by Israeli forces at a checkpoint, officials on both sides said.
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The latest incidents add to a mounting toll which has cost four Israeli and 16 Palestinian lives across the territory since Monday.
Palestinians have described hundreds of Israelis attacking their villages in recent days, after Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis near a West Bank settlement on Tuesday.
The heads of the Israeli military, police and the Shin Bet domestic security agency on Saturday described as “nationalist terrorism” the series of attacks by Israelis targeting Palestinians in the West Bank.
“This violence increases Palestinian terrorism and harms the state of Israel and the international legitimacy of Israel’s security forces to fight Palestinian terrorism,” a joint statement said.
In the latest such incident, Israel’s army said “rocks were hurled and reports were received of Israeli citizens setting fire to Palestinian property” in the northern village of Umm Safa.
A soldier was wounded and one Israeli was arrested, the army said.
The Palestinian health ministry said an ambulance “was stoned by (Israeli) settlers” near Umm Safa, wounding the driver.
Israel has occupied the West Banksince the 1967 Six-Day War and, excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it occupied in the Six-Day War and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to “strengthen settlements” and has expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, moribund since 2014.
Netanyahu’s coalition contains hardline settlers,…
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