The death of a young Palestinian who this past Friday allegedly committed, according to Israel, an attack with a knife and was fatally shot by an Israeli policeman with whom he was fighting, has caused outrage among the Palestinian population and tension between the UN and Israel, After a video of the event was broadcast on social networks. This week has been especially violent in the West Bank, where a dozen Palestinians have died since last Monday.
Tension in the area has increased in recent days so much so that a rocket launched this Saturday from Gaza sounded anti-aircraft alarms in Israeli areas adjacent to the strip and hit an uninhabited area. It is the first projectile fired from the enclave into Israel in a month.
The images of the latest death of a Palestinian, broadcast on Twitter or Instagram, show how An Israeli border policeman grapples with a boy in a fight in a town in the northern occupied West Bankuntil the agent pulls out his pistol and fires four bullets that kill him instantly.
According to the Israeli Police, the incident was in the context of an attack in which the young man tried to enter the car of an Israeli couple, and later wounded another agent in the face with a knife.
However, the video that was broadcast on the networks of the event generated discomfort among Palestinian public opinion, and the condemnation of the Palestinian National Authority and the United Nations.
“Horrified by the killing today of a Palestinian man, Ammar Mifleh, in a fight with an Israeli soldier”said Tor Wennesland, UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, on Twitter. “These incidents must be fully and promptly investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable,” he added.
Given this, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesmanEmmanuel Nahson, assured this Saturday that the reaction of Wennesland “It’s a total distortion of reality”.
“This incident is a terrorist attack, in which an Israeli policeman was stabbed in the face and the life of another policeman was threatened, so he shot his attacker. This is not a ‘fight’,” Nahson argued through from your Twitter account.
So did the outgoing Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantzwhich condemned Wennesland’s statement and “attempts to present the incident in a false and manipulative manner”.
For his part, The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called this Saturday the father of the deceased young Palestinian to express his condolencesand “denounced the heinous crime committed in cold blood”, which “is part of a series of crimes committed by the occupation (Israel) on a daily basis.”
For more than six months, The occupied West Bank experiences an intense escalation of tensionand violent incidents between Palestinians and Israeli forces are repeated weekly
This 2022, 159 Palestinians have died – many militants, but also civilians and minors – in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, while on the Israeli side 29 people lost their lives, 21 of them civilians.
Israel seized control of the West Bank with the 1967 Six-Day War, and since then has maintained one of the longest military occupations of this territory in recent history.
The EU, “very concerned” by the increase in violence
The European Union (EU) is “very concerned” about the increase in the level of violence in the occupied West Bank where a dozen Palestinians have been killed by the Israel Security Forces (ISF) in recent days.
The EU is “very concerned about the rising level of violence in the occupied West Bank. During the last few days alone, 10 Palestinians have been killed by the ISF,” the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said in a statement.
