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JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed two Palestinians Thursday in the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The ministry said Jawad Farid Bawaqna was killed by a bullet to the chest, while Adham Mohammed Bassem Jabareen, 28, was hit in the upper abdomen by Israeli fire.

The Israeli occupation forces said that during "counterterrorism activity in the Jenin [refugee] camp, armed Palestinian gunmen fired heavily at the security forces, who responded with live fire".

The Islamic Jihad group said Jabareen was a member.

Bawaqna was a sports teacher and youth leader in Jenin refugee camp, the province's deputy governor said.

There were conflicting reports on Bawaqna's age, with the health ministry saying he was 57, and the Palestinian official news agency Wafa reporting he was 58.

Farid Bawaqna, Jawad’s son, said his father was shot dead while trying to move Jabareen’s body.

“My father called me from the top of the house, and told me to ‘get down, there is a young man who was martyred at the door of the house, come so we can drag him,’” he told AFP.

“We went down together, and pulled him... We dragged him about 4 to 5 metres and a bullet entered my father’s body.”

The deaths raise the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank this month to 17, including civilians and militants, according to an AFP tally.

The majority were killed by Israeli forces.

A surge in violence in 2022 made it the deadliest year in the West Bank since United Nations records began in 2005.

At least 200 Palestinians were killed across the Palestinian territories last year, according to AFP figures.

The majority of deaths were in the West Bank, although the toll also includes 49 Palestinians killed in a three-day conflict in Gaza.

By Kamal Taha
Agence France-Presse

AMMAN — Jordanian film “Farha”, vehemently criticised in Israel, is based on true events and represents “only a drop in the ocean” of Palestinian suffering, director Darin J. Sallam told AFP.

Released last month on Netflix, “Farha” depicts atrocities against Palestinians during the 1948 conflict following Israel’s creation, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

The Arabic-language film tells the story of a Palestinian teenager, Farha, whose village comes under attack by Israeli forces.

Her father hides her and, through a crack in a door, she witnesses the execution a family of Palestinian civilians, including two girls.

Sallam, 35, said the plot for her first full-length feature was inspired by a story told to her by her mother, about a Palestinian woman named Radiyeh.

The film recounts “the story of a girl who had been forced to abandon her dreams because of events she had no control over”, Sallam said.

“Farha” featured in the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and has won a dozen awards in other festivals.

In Israel, where discussion of alleged atrocities during the 1948 war remains largely taboo, officials condemned Netflix over the decision to stream the film.

“I wanted to open the world’s eyes to this pivotal moment in the history... and to show that this land was not without people,” Sallam said, of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“Rather, it was a land with people who had lives, dreams, hopes and history.”

‘I am Farha’ 

The film was shot in the northern Jordan towns of Ajlun and Fuhais, which resemble the Palestinian village where Farha’s story begins.

The teenage girl tries to persuade her father to let her complete her studies in the city, prepares for a friend’s wedding and picks figs before her village is attacked.

Sallam said she avoided showing violence, with the exception of the unarmed family’s killing.

“This scene, which shook the Israeli government, is only a drop in the ocean of the suffering of millions of Palestinians during the Nakba,” she said.

Sallam called for more filmmakers to explore this painful chapter in Palestinian history, which “almost never appears in cinema”.

Her mother, of Syrian origin, had heard Radiyeh’s story at a refugee camp in that country and passed it on to her, “and I decided to make a film and share it”.

“Radiyeh had been locked up by her father who feared for her, and when she was finally able to come out of hiding she went to Syria,” Sallam said. “That’s where she told the story to my mother.”

The filmmaker said she had “lost all contact with this woman”, a resident of the war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, north of Damascus, since fighting in Syria began in 2011.

After one screening of the film in the United States, an audience member spoke to Sallam.

“A woman aged in her eighties who had survived the Nakba told me: ‘I am Farha’,” she said.

‘Lies’ 

Former Israeli minister Avigdor Lieberman, who had served in government until Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power last month, said in November the film’s “whole purpose is to create a false pretence and incite against Israeli soldiers”.

Chili Tropper, Israel’s former culture minister, said “Farha” shows “lies and libels”.

For Sallam, whose father is Palestinian, “denying the Nakba is denying my existence, denying the tragedy of millions of people”.

“My own father survived the Nakba. He... fled to Jordan with his parents.”

Sallam’s father was born in Ramle, in what is now central Israel.

Most of its Arab residents fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 conflict, as were more than 760,000 Palestinians across the country.

Many of their descendants live to this day in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Last year, Israeli director Alon Schwarz faced backlash over his documentary on an alleged 1948 massacre of Palestinians in Tantura, a Mediterranean village in the northwest of what is now Israel.

Calls have mounted in recent years, including among Israeli activists, for greater transparency about the conduct of nascent Israeli forces during the 1948 conflict.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Some 40 countries on Monday called on Israel to lift sanctions it imposed on the Palestinian Authority earlier this month over its push to get the UN's top court to issue an advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation.

On December 30, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting an opinion from the International Court of Justice on the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

In retaliation, Israel announced a series of sanctions, including financial ones, on January 6 against the Palestinian Authority to make it "pay the price" for pushing for the resolution.

In a statement to journalists Monday, some 40 United Nations member states, reaffirming their "unwavering support" for the ICJ and international law, expressed "deep concern regarding the Israeli government's decision to impose punitive measures against the Palestinian people, leadership and civil society following the request by the General Assembly" to the court.

"Regardless of each country's position on the resolution, we reject punitive measures in response to a request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and more broadly in response to a General Assembly resolution, and call for their immediate reversal," the members said.

The statement is signed by countries that voted for this resolution (Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Ireland, Pakistan and South Africa, among others) but also by some that abstained, Japan, France and South Korea, and others that voted against, like Germany and Estonia.

"This is significant as it shows that regardless of how countries have voted, they are united in rejecting these punitive measures," the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said in a statement.

Asked about the members’ statement, a spokeswoman for the UN secretary general reiterated Antonio Guterres’s “deep concern” about “recent Israeli measures against the Palestinian Authority”, stressing that “there should be no retaliation” in connection with the ICJ.

A UN Security Council meeting on the Palestinian issue is schedulled for Wednesday.

A previous meeting this month, after the visit of an Israeli minister to the Al Aqsa Mosque, known in Judaism as the Temple Mount, led to a tense verbal exchange between Israeli and Palestinian diplomats.

DHEISHEH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli authorities said on Tuesday they had deported an Italian woman detained in a deadly military raid in the Bethlehem area of the occupied West Bank.

Stefania Costantini was arrested on Monday during an incursion by Israeli forces into Dheisheh refugee camp, in the southern West Bank, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said.

A 14-year-old boy was shot dead by Israeli forces during the raid, with the army saying forces opened fire when residents threw Molotov cocktails and other weapons at them.

The Shin Bet said Costantini arrived on a tourist visa in May, and was suspected of being involved in the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militant group.

“Costantini was summoned in September 2022 for interrogation by the Shin Bet, but she did not report [to the authorities] and even continued her activities for the terrorist organisation,” the agency said in a statement.

The PFLP has also been designated a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union.

After Costantini’s arrest on Monday, she was handed over to Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority, whose spokeswoman said she was deported the same day.

Costantini, 50, said she was beaten by soldiers during her arrest.

“I tried to resist and they beat me a lot, they kicked me on the ground,” she told AFP from the Italian city of Pisa.

“They were shouting that I was a terrorist,” added Costantini, describing herself as a pro-Palestinian activist.

“When I was in the jeep, they kept kicking my legs with their boots,” she said.

The Israeli military did not comment on the allegations when contacted by AFP.

Umm Nidal Abu Aker, 76, said she had hosted Costantini over the past five months.

“She didn’t want to go with them but they hit her and carried her on the shoulders of one soldier,” she said in her home, which was decorated with PFLP flags and those of other Palestinian groups.

Costantini “loved to show her solidarity with Palestinian people”, said Abu Aker, describing the Italian visiting families of Palestinians killed and participating in protests.

Her expulsion came the same day Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani spoke by phone to his Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen.

Neither mentioned Costantini’s case in their statements about the call, published on Twitter.

The Italian consulate in Jerusalem did not respond to a request for comment on Costantini’s deportation.

So far this month, 15 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including civilians and fighters, the majority shot dead by Israeli forces, according to an AFP tally.

DHEISHEH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed a Palestinian boy on Monday near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, where the army said they opened fire after people threw Molotov cocktails.

Omar Khmour, 14, was shot in the head early Monday in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the southern West Bank and “succumbed to his wounds”, the ministry said.

The Israeli military said on Monday that troops opened fire after “suspects hurled rocks, explosive devices and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers”.

He is the second boy killed in Dheisheh during an Israeli military incursion so far this month.

One person was arrested by troops in Dheisheh, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the army had entered the camp “at dawn and launched a campaign of raids on citizens’ homes”.

Mourners gathered later Monday for Khmour’s funeral, with his mother leading the procession of his body through Dheisheh.

His body was wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf and a Palestinian flag, before being carried by militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Khmour is the fourteenth Palestinian killed in the West Bank since the start of the year, including civilians and fighters, the majority shot dead by Israeli forces, according to an AFP tally.

Following a series of fatal attacks targeting Israelis last March and April, Israeli forces launched near-nightly raids in the West Bank in which scores have been killed.

The violence in 2022 made it the deadliest year in the West Bank since United Nations records began in 2005.

At least 26 Israelis and 200 Palestinians were killed across Israel and the Palestinian territories last year, according to AFP figures.

RAMMUN, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian foreign ministry on Sunday condemned as an "execution" the killing of a Palestinian man by Israeli forces at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.

The ministry slammed the "heinous execution" of Ahmad Kahla, 45, who was shot dead by Israeli forces near the village of Silwad north of Ramallah.

The man's son, Qusai Kahla, told AFP he was in the car with his father when they were stopped at the checkpoint.

"Soldiers came and they sprayed pepper spray on my face and pulled me out of the car," the 18-year-old said at the family home in Rammun village.

"I don't know what happened after that," he said. "I found out from my uncle that my dad was killed."

Kahla was shot in the neck, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The military did not immediately respond to requests by AFP to clarify the weapons used to stop the vehicle, or whether the civilian was unarmed when killed.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported soldiers forced Kahla out of his vehicle before shooting him at "point blank" range.

Dozens of mourners gathered for Kahla's funeral on Sunday, an AFP correspondent said, with some calling for revenge.

Kahla's death brings up to 13 the number of Palestinians killed in the territory so far this month, the majority shot by Israeli forces, according to an AFP tally.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said the Israeli leadership has made it "easy for soldiers to kill any Palestinian without them posing any danger to the occupation soldiers".

Israel's most right-wing government in history was sworn in last month, including ministers known for their anti-Palestinian remarks who have taken over key powers in the West Bank.

The rising toll this month follows the deadliest year in the West Bank since United Nations records began in 2005.

A surge in bloodshed last year saw at least 200 Palestinians killed across the Palestinian territories, according to an AFP tally.

More than 150 of the fatalities were in the West Bank.

ISTANBUL — A new Turkish ground offensive in Syria is "possible any time", a top aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, despite a Moscow-brokered rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara.

The Kremlin is trying to end more than a decade of hostility between the neighbours that began when Turkey backed rebel efforts to topple President Bashar Assad at the start of the Syrian civil war.

Turkey has since also launched a series of incursions into northern Syria, most of them targeting Kurdish forces it views as "terrorists".

Erdogan's foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin said the Russian push for peace did not mean Turkey was abandoning the option of launching a new campaign that Ankara has been warning might happen for months.

"A ground operation is possible any time, depending on the level of threats we receive," Kalin told reporters.

"Turkey never targets the Syrian state or Syrian civilians."

His comments came two days after Assad said future talks with Ankara should aim for "the end of occupation" by Turkey of parts of Syria.

Turkey has military bases in northern Syria and also backs some local militias fighting against the Syrian army.

Erdogan, who called Assad a "terrorist" in 2017, has opened up to the idea of meeting the Syrian leader ahead of Turkey's general election, now expected in May.

Syrian and Turkish defence chiefs held their first meeting since 2011 in Moscow in late December.

Kalin said the two sides will hold a "series of meetings" in preparation for a possible presidential summit.

He said a proposed meeting between the foreign ministers, expected to be held in Moscow, could take place in mid-February.

Kalin said that meeting might be preceded by another round of talks between the defence ministers.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Two Palestinians were killed Saturday during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The two young men were shot dead by Israeli forces "during an assault on the village of Jaba, south of Jenin" in the north of the West Bank, the ministry said.

No further details were provided on the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

The Islamic Jihad group condemned the killings in a statement, describing the two men as "heroic martyrs" belonging to the group.

It said they were killed while trying to intervene against the "occupation forces which were carrying out a cowardly assassination operation".

An AFP photographer saw a white car in Jaba with its windshield riddled with bullets on the driver's side.

The vehicle had crashed into a building under construction and its rear was completely gutted.

The Palestinian health ministry named the two young men killed as Ezzedine Bassem Hamamra, 24, and Amjad Adnan Khaliliya, 23.

A third Palestinian, 19-year-old Yazen Samer Jaabari, died of his injuries after he was shot by Israeli forces earlier this month, the ministry said.

He was wounded during in Israeli forces operation on January 2 in the village of Kafr Dan, near Jenin, in which two other Palestinians were killed, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The latest deaths bring up to 12 the toll of Palestinians killed this year during violence in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Israeli forces have launched near-daily raids in the occupiedWest Bank. 

The surge in bloodshed last year saw at least 200 Palestinians killed across Israel and the occupied West Bank, according to an AFP tally.

More than 150 of the fatalities were in the occupied West Bank.