For the second consecutive day, Palestinian cities in the West Bank are shut down in a general strike as protests erupt across Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, and Hebron in response to an Israeli raid on Jenin refugee camp that killed four Palestinians and injured over 50.
Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian teenager Oday Salah in the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin on Thursday morning, just 24 hours after two Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in confrontations in Jenin. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports that 149 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year, 34 of whom were from the Jenin area.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers raided the city in an operation to destroy the home of Raad Khazem, a 28-year-old Palestinian from Jenin who carried out a shooting attack in Tel Aviv earlier this year that killed three people.
Protests and calls for resistance have spread across the West Bank in the first 24 hours since Israel instigated the latest round of violence with the besieged Gaza Strip.
Alawneh was was shot in the abdomen and hand, and was pronounced dead on Sunday afternoon, making him the 78th Palestinian killed by Israeli forces this year, and the 16th Palestinian child killed by Israel since the start of 2022.
National Public Radio aired a long story yesterday featuring a demand by the brother of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh that the United States investigate her killing in Jenin on May 11 and keep Israel out of the case. So some American media continue to seek to undermine Israel’s impunity– and push Joe Biden not to dodge the matter, as he surely wants to.
The three slain Palestinians were identified as Baraa Lahlouh, 24, Yusuf Salah, 23, and Laith Abu Srour, 24, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed this year to 66.
Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager during a raid on the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin over the weekend, just days after they used a Palestinian girl as a human shield in the city.
The mass outpouring of national unity that followed the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh reflects a historic moment of Palestinian struggle and consciousness. What began last year during the Unity Intifada in reaction to the attacks on Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah has now continued through the Gilboa Prison escape and the martyrdom of Abu Akleh. Palestinian political and civil society leaders must now maintain the momentum of this solidarity that Abu Akleh’s departure has left.