No letup in deadly Israeli raids against Palestinians

RAMALLAH: The Israeli army killed a Palestinian and arrested 30 in the West Bank on Thursday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Ghazi Shehab, 66, succumbed to injuries in the evening after being shot earlier in the day when Israeli forces stormed Nur Shams camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
It brought the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army and settlers to 141 — 26 in Gaza — since the beginning of the year.
More than 200 armed soldiers stormed the Nur Shams camp from all sides. They vandalized and destroyed contents and furniture in several houses and smashed 10 vehicles in a four-hour operation.
Taha Irani, head of the camp services council, said that such an incursion was not rare, adding that forces had recently intensified campaigns against the camp, coinciding with the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the Nakba, which is also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe.
The Israeli army also launched a massive arrest campaign in the West Bank at dawn on Thursday, arresting 30 citizens.
An Israeli settler attacked Palestinian vehicles with stones on the same day near the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, while a 19-year-old woman sustained bruises after being hit by a car driven by a settler near Al-Aroub refugee camp.
Ghassan Daglas, an official in charge of settlement affairs in the northern West Bank, said settler bulldozers had been working since Thursday morning to destroy the land between the towns of Asira Al-Qibliya and Urif, which is planted with olive trees.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have announced the suspension of work on extending a water facility for agriculture in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of depriving citizens in those areas of essential services as part of a policy aimed at displacing residents from their land to help the settlement expansion.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taking advantage of a “double standard” of the international community “to cover up his crimes against the Palestinian people.”
It said global silence on the Israeli aggression and the biased position of some countries served as a “green light” for Israel to continue its actions against Palestinians.
It added that Netanyahu had bragged about using military force against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while countries ignored the crimes committed by Israel in killing Palestinian civilians, including women and children, “in the sight of the international community.”
It criticized countries that justified his crimes under the pretext of “self-defense,” while lamenting the interpretation of international humanitarian law “according to the identity of the executioner and the victim.”
Palestinians have accused Israel of enforcing apartheid in the West Bank by erecting 650 iron gates to separate Palestinian villages, as well as demolishing buildings and depriving refugees of their right to work.
Ibrahim Melhem, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, told Arab News that the Israeli army was waging an open war in all areas, towns and camps in the West Bank in an attempt by Israel’s right-wing leadership to win the conflict.
He said: “The Israeli army now considers every Palestinian a target, either by killing, wounding, or arresting, because of the terrorist mentality that shapes the behavior of those killers.”