Israeli soldiers shoot dead two Palestinian assailants – army

Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinians in two different incidents in southern occupied West Bank for allegedly trying to stab soldiers Thursday night, Palestinian and Israeli authorities said.

A spokeswoman said the attack occurred in the north of the Jordan Valley.

Twenty-two Israelis, an American and an Eritrean have been killed in Palestinian attacks including stabbings, auto rammings and gunfire targeting security forces and civilians since October 1.

Ezra Nawi, a Jewish radical left-wing activist who campaigns for Palestinian rights, has been secretly recorded boasting of turning Palestinian real-estate dealers who sell land to Jews over to the PA, which tortures and kills them.

The controversial practice, which critics claim amounts to collective punishment, is widely used in the West Bank and resumed in east Jerusalem in November after a five-year hiatus. The Israeli army also raided the university in June 2014. The pair were said to have been retaliating for the terrorist murder of Malachi Rosenfeld, 25, gunned down not far from Duma, the village where the fire started by a Molotov cocktail killed Sa’ad Dawabsheh, his wife and their toddler son.

Israel says home demolitions, which have come under global criticism, are a way of discouraging Palestinian attacks.

State Department John Kirby said Friday that “continued settlement activity and expansion raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions and will only make achieving a two state solution much more hard”. Almost 20 Israelis have also been killed in the clashes.

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.

Israel recently revived the punitive measure in an attempt to deter future attackers by establishing that their families could be harmed even after their own deaths.