Palestinian killed in Israeli raid in Hebron

A Palestinian man was shot dead during an Israeli raid in Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, January 10.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the deceased was identified as 58-year-old Shaker Falah Ahmad Al-Jaabari. The Ministry said that Israeli forces held Al-Jabari’s body, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed it responded to “threat and opened fire at the terrorist who attempted to run them over,” news agency AFP reported.

Hours later, the IDF said in a separate statement that investigators had found “no conclusive evidence to indicate that the incident constituted an intentional terror attack,” adding the case remained under investigation.

Violence has increased in the West Bank since the Israel-Palestine reemerged in October 2023. At least 1,029 Palestinians residing in the West Bank have been killed since the conflict began. As many as 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, since the Six-Day War of 1967. 

Their presence is viewed by most of the international community as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. 

Over two dozen Bedouin families residing in the last remaining villages in the West Bank have been forced to move out due to harassment by Israeli settlers.

“We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” said Nayef Zayed, a resident, as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures, told AFP.

“Some residents decided to stay in the West Bank. That makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area,” said Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents.

She said that increasing settler violence has led to Palestinian hamlets located between Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east, being vacated.

The area is part of the 60 per cent of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control under the interim peace accords signed in the 1990s.