Israeli forces kill three in West Bank

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces on Sunday killed three Palestinians in the West Bank, the army said, the latest deaths in a surge of violence rocking the occupied territory.

An army statement said its forces “operated to prevent an immediate threat” and described one of the dead as a “leading military operative” from the Jenin refugee camp.

Since early last year, the West Bank has seen a string of attacks by Palestinians on Israeli targets, as well as violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities and repeated Israeli forces raids.

Israeli forces on Sunday said that “a vehicle carrying a squad of terrorists from the Jenin refugee camp was identified while on its way to carry out an attack”.

Soldiers opened fire and killed three passengers, the statement said, including the suspected squad leader, 26-year-old Nayef Abu Swiess.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the deaths of three “young men by occupation [Israeli] bullets” in the incident near the town of Arraba in the Jenin area.

Deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al Roub, told AFP the Israeli forces had “taken the car and the bodies”.

“The car had an Israeli licence plate,” he said.

Abu Swiess, according to the army statement, was “involved in military action against Israeli forces and advancing military activity directed by terrorists in the Gaza Strip”, the coastal enclave controlled by Palestinian fighters group Hamas.

Rising violence

Jenin refugee camp, one of the most crowded and impoverished in the West Bank, has become synonymous with Palestinian militancy and resistance against Israel, which views it as a “terrorist hub”.

In recent years it has been the site of fierce fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.

Over the past 18 months, the security situation in the camp has deteriorated with repeated Israeli raids which security forces say are to pursue militants.

In July, the Israeli army carried out its biggest operation there in years which killed 12 Palestinians including militants and children.

One Israeli soldier was also killed in the two-day operation.

The camp was established in 1953 to house some of those among the 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during what Palestinian call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, the 1948 war that coincided with Israel’s creation.

Today some 18,000 people live in the camp.

Sunday’s deaths are the latest in a surge of bloodshed to hit the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the June War of 1967.

Excluding occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians and around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.