Palestinian kills 2 Israelis in West Bank shooting attack

“While the number of attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians, soldiers and police has increased significantly since the beginning of October, there is never any excuse for the Israeli military and police forces using lethal force where it is not warranted”.

The hospital room slaying brought to at least 75 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the start of October, dozens as a result of Israel’s policy of summary execution encouraged by its top leaders. A cousin, Abdallah, who was in the bathroom, was shot dead when he suddenly entered the room, Shawar said.

The director of Hebron’s al-Ahly hospital, Jehad Shawar, told Palestine radio 20-30 men arrived at the clinic in two mini vans at around three o’clock in the morning.

In the last two months Palestinians have killed 14 Israelis, mainly in stabbing attacks, while 81 Palestinians have been killed, including 51 said by Israel to have been involved in assaults.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been declared illegal by the United Nations. Video of the aftermath of the incident shows Mahdi al-Muhtasib writhing in pain on the ground before an Israeli soldier, standing a distance of a few metres away, shoots him again.

On Friday, a Palestinian gunman ambushed an Israeli family in the West Bank, killing a father and his son, while clashes with Israeli security forces in the territory killed two Palestinians. The shooters fled the scene.

On 6 November, Israeli forces shot and killed 72-year-old Tharwat al-Sharawi, claiming that she meant to ram them with her vehicle.

The Israelis gunned down one Palestinian during clashes near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Israel says the fighting has been fueled by Palestinian incitement while Palestinians say it’s the result of despair over the repeated failure of peace talks and a lack of hope of gaining independence.

The murdered father and the son were seated in the front seats of the vehicle; initial reports said the family, said to live in the settlement of Kiryat Arba adjoining Hebron, was on its way to relatives in the southern town of Meitar for Shabbat when the attack happened.

The march in al-Khalil, which was called after Friday prayers by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on another Day of Rage, was apparently the biggest in size, with reports saying it turned into a deadly confrontation between the Palestinians and the Israeli forces. The Israeli military’s own regulations allow soldiers in the occupied West Bank to open fire only when their lives are in imminent danger.

“But these are our neighbors”, he said of the Palestinian radicals, “they behave like inhuman animals”.