Two Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the span of 24 hours, one of them a 15-year-old boy.
On Wednesday, Palestinians mourned the killing of 15-year-old Zaid Qaysia from the Fawwar refugee camp in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, after he was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers during a raid on the camp.
According to Haaretz, Israeli soldiers entered the refugee camp under the cover of a van with Palestinian license plates.
AJ+, an online news channel run by Al Jazeera, reported that the soldiers were allegedly searching for another teen from the camp for “insulting an Israeli soldier on Facebook.”
The presence of the soldiers quickly sparked clashes in the camp, which is no stranger to deadly raids from Israeli forces.
Local Palestinian media reported that Israeli forces used tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition on protesters.
Qaysia was, according to several accounts from witnesses, reportedly several hundred meters away from the clashes, and was watching the raid with his sister on his family’s rooftop.
That’s when Qaysia was struck with a live bullet in his head, killing him. The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that at least two other Palesitnians were injured during the clashes with live ammunition in the stomach and back.
The Israeli army said in a statement that they were “aware of the claim that a Palestinian was killed and that a number of Palestinians were wounded,” Haaretz reported.
In the statement, the army referred to protesters as “terrorists” who started “violent riots”, and threw “stones and boulders, firebombs and explosives during the operation.”
Meanwhile on Thursday morning another Palestinian was killed during an alleged car-ramming attack, also in the Hebron district, near the illegal Negohot settlement.
Israeli media reported that a Palestinian man was shot dead by soldiers after he “drove quickly” towards soldiers stationed at a medical post.
After hitting one soldier with the car, another soldier opened fire and killed the man, who has yet to be identified. The army said they were “looking into” the incident, and that the wounded soldier was rushed to the hospital in moderate condition.
Israeli soldiers in the West Bank have been on edge in recent days, after a soldier was killed when someone dropped a large rock on his head during a night raid on the Jenin-area town of Yabad.
Since the raid, Israeli forces have embarked on a manhunt in the northern West Bank looking for the suspect, arresting nearly a dozen members of the same family from Yabad, and injuring several others.
Is it AGAINST THE LAW to insult someone on Facebook? Or is this just something the IDF made up?