Israeli forces arrest six Palestinians during West Bank raids

The soldiers at Bekaot checkpoint in the northern West Bank were not injured and Israeli forces “thwarted the attack and shot the assailants”, said the military. Also today, Israel returned the bodies of four Palestinians killed on Thursday during two attacks in the southern West Bank. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the two men were dead.

A Palestinian armed with a knife attempted to stab a soldier during a security check near the community of Hermesh.

“We were three cars awaiting our turn to cross, the two men who were killed were in the auto ahead of mine”.

Asked what the secret police do with the information, he says: “They catch these guys and they kill them”.

According to B’Tselem, an Israeli organisation working for human rights in the occupied territories, not only are house demolitions unlawful since they constitute deliberate harm to innocents, but their deterrent effect has never been proven.

It was the latest in a series of attacks over the past three months that include stabbings, gunfire and vehicle rammings by Palestinians targeting Israeli forces. Palestinians say it stems from frustration at decades of occupation.

Palestinians are angry at increasing violence by Israeli settlers at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and their attacks on Palestinian properties, saying that the Tel Aviv regime seeks to change the status quo of the compound.

Several Palestinians have also been killed in clashes during funerals over the past months.

“Continued settlement activity and expansion raises honest question about Israel’s long term intentions and will only making achieving a two-state solution that much more hard”, State Department’s spokesman John Kirby told a daily news briefing. His motives still remain unclear.

Overnight, Israeli forces demolished a home in the West Bank belonging to relatives of a Palestinian – Muhannad Halabi – shot dead in October after killing a rabbi in Jerusalem’s Old City.