Tensions flared in the West Bank on Friday as angry and sometimes armed confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces took place across the occupied territory after a deadly raid by Israeli troops.
The Palestinian health ministry said 13 people including five children were killed on Thursday in the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem. Israeli media said Israeli troops used a drone before engaging in a prolonged gun battle with armed groups in the camp that left civilians and several militants dead.
The organisation Defence for Children International in Palestine said Israeli forces used an American-supplied Apache helicopter, which “fired a missile toward a group of Palestinian civilians, mostly children”, and prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Thousands from the camp attended funerals for those killed in the attack, including supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a paramilitary offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood group. Crowds of supporters of the Islamic Jihad group chanted “revenge” and waved flags, an indication of the increasing prominence of armed groups in the West Bank.
“It’s not worth blaming the fighters or giving excuses about Hamas, or Fatah, or the Islamic Jihad being responsible for our suffering – the responsibility lies with the occupation,” said Mohammed Zuhdi, a resident of Nur Shams camp, in reference to Israeli forces.
“No one wants to die, but people get angry when they see women and children getting massacred, and they protest – then [are] killed by the Israeli army,” he said.
“I’m here to stand with my people. Even if you do nothing to the Israelis they will shoot you – no one is safe these days.”
Ahmad, a 21-year-old member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who joined the protests, claimed that one Israeli soldier had been killed and others injured in the raid.
“The Israeli soldiers are taking their feelings out on women and children,” he said. “I don’t know how they are planning a ground war in Gaza if they can’t enter a camp in Nur Shams.”
The Israeli military confirmed that a reservist sergeant from the Israeli border police was killed in the raid, which lasted more than 24 hours and involved an aircraft. In a statement, the IDF said they were targeting members of Hamas who shot four Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Eli earlier this year.
They added that Israeli forces arrested more than 60 terror suspects in overnight raids in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The confrontations on Friday followed calls by Hamas for a “day of rage” across the West Bank, amid increasing anger across the Middle East after Israel’s attack on Gaza – and particularly after the blast at al-Ahli hospital that is reported to have killed hundreds.
Palestinians have blamed Israeli forces for the strike, while the Israeli military has maintained that a misfired rocket by the PIJ caused the casualties.
Despite a crackdown by Israeli forces and Palestinian Authority security forces, many ordinary people in the West Bank also said they felt the need to protest.
“We have no weapons to fight, but at least we can show the entire world that we stand with the children of Gaza,” said Nasser Saeed from the al Jalazone refugee camp, at a protest at a checkpoint near Ramallah earlier this week.
Since the 7 October attack by Hamas militants that left at least 1,300 Israelis dead, a wave of deadly violence has slowly engulfed the West Bank as casualties spiked in Gaza. Palestinians express fear at what they said was the increasing willingness of Israeli forces to use live ammunition against demonstrators and the growing impunity of some of the 700,000 Israeli settlers across the area, many of whom are armed.The Palestinian news agency Wafa said armed settlers opened fire in the city of Bethlehem on Thursday evening, injuring at least three people, while in Hebron a child was reported to be injured by gunfire from the Israeli military.
Throughout Friday, Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces across East Jerusalem and the West Bank, with youths confronting armed Israeli soldiers at many of the checkpoints that have remained shuttered since the Hamas attack.
The Palestinian health ministry said a young man was shot in the chest with live ammunition during a clash with Israeli security forces stationed outside the Ofer prison complex near Ramallah. Israeli settlers also reportedly opened fire on Palestinians harvesting olives in the village of Yasuf, south of Nablus.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, but incidents of settler violence have steadily increased over the past few years. Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem label the inequality of rights afforded to Palestinians as an “apartheid” system, particularly in the West Bank, amid a neutered Palestinian leadership and growing discontent with the Palestinian Authority.
“Palestinian security forces should be with us, not against us. We should be united against the Israeli atrocities that are practised daily on our people,” said Saeed.
Earlier this week, Palestinian Authority security forces shot dead a 12-year-old girl and injured a university student. Protesters in the largest West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, clashed with Palestinian security forces and demanded the downfall of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
“What is happening across the West Bank is that people believe they have a right to defend themselves, because they believe there’s no leadership to protect them,” said Jamal Zakout, a former adviser to ex-Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, referring to the growth of armed Palestinian militias in the West Bank.
“Everyone’s is trying to protect themselves, and Israel is responsible for this, as they’re only thinking about how to protect settlers who commit crimes on a daily basis.”
At least 83 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank at the hands of Israeli forces, settlers or Palestinian Authority security forces since Hamas’s attack on 7 October, with more than 1,400 injured.
DCI Palestine said the dead increasingly included minors, including four children who were shot within 24 hours. The organisation said it had documented an increase in the use of live ammunition aimed at Palestinian minors by Israeli security forces, with many sustaining fatal injuries to the head, chest and abdomen.
Video from the aftermath in Nur Shams showed burnt-out cars in the camp’s tight alleyways, with people and ambulances crowding into the streets to survey the damage, which included piles of debris and buildings reduced to concrete skeletons.
