RAMALLAH: Palestinian medical sources announced on Saturday that two Palestinians — Isaac Al-Ajlouni, 18, and Tareq Idris, 39 — had been killed by Israeli security forces.
Al-Ajlouni, from Kufur Aqab, north of Jerusalem, was shot dead by Israeli security guards on Saturday during fighting at the Qalandia checkpoint.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Idris was shot during a violent confrontation in the Askar camp in Nablus on Friday. He was admitted to hospital with a bullet wound to the abdomen and later died.
Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila said that settlers had thrown stones at an ambulance near the village of Umm Safa while it was transporting a patient to a hospital in Ramallah. The attack resulted in minor injuries to the driver, but the patient sustained no further damage, she added.
Al-Kaila called on the international community to protect medical staff and the Palestinian people from the settlers’ “terrorism,” which she said is “carried out under the protection of the Israeli army.”
Dozens of settlers attacked Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, and shot at residents, as well as at a crew from Palestine TV who were covering the events.
Marwan Sabah, head of the Umm Safa village council, told Arab News that around 70 settlers — accompanied by the Israeli army — stormed the village.
Palestine TV cameraman Mohammed Radhi said that settlers fired at him and one of his colleagues.
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In Al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, locals reported on Saturday that settlers had assaulted several citizens in the village. An 80-year-old resident sustained bruises during the attack.
Palestinians renewed their calls for the formation of local protection committees throughout the West Bank.
More than 400 violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property have been recorded since June 20, Ghassan Daglas, who works for the Palestinian Presidential Office, told Arab News on June 24.
Also on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s recent statement — in which he advocated the killing of thousands of Palestinians “if need be” — as “abhorrent, genocidal, and demonstrating clear criminal and murderous intent.”
The ministry said Ben-Gvir’s “criminal pronouncements” would encourage Israeli settlers to “commit more war crimes by taking more Palestinian land and creating more settlements,” and reflected Israel’s “abject disregard for Palestinian lives and the pervasive culture of impunity.”
The statement continued: “This impunity and criminal tendency are encouraged and bolstered by the failure of the international community to hold Israel accountable for its systematic and widespread egregious violations of international law and Palestinian rights.”
The ministry also said that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court “must understand that Israel reads his continued silence, procrastination, and diminishing of the investigation into the situation in Palestine as a lack of interest.”
It added: “It is time to confront this bitter truth: Israeli exceptionalism costs Palestinian lives,”
Egyptian institution Al-Azhar Al-Sharif condemned Israeli settlers’ destruction of copies of the Holy Qur’an in Urif, south of Nablus, calling it a “flagrant violation of international law, and all norms and covenants that stipulate respect for religious sanctities and guarantee freedom of worship.”
In its statement, Al-Azhar said that “the continuation of the Israeli occupation and its crimes under the eyes and ears of the international community — and the inability of the whole world to deter it, expose its crimes and bloody behavior, and stop it — is unjustified complicity and a crime against humanity.”
Al-Azhar called for a “strict and unified Arab and Islamic stance” toward Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
