2023-05-22 07:38:02
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Three Palestinians were killed early Monday morning in an Israeli military raid on a West Bank refugee camp, according to Palestinian health officials, as the U.S. government harshly condemned a new Israeli government move to expand settlements.
Israeli troops killed the three men during a raid on Balata, a refugee camp near the city of Nablus, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Six people were injured, one of them in critical condition, the ministry said.
The army later confirmed that the soldiers had stormed Balata. The military were shot at and killed three Palestinians, he added. Israel, which stepped up raids in response to a series of Palestinian attacks, said it found weapons and an explosives workshop in a house, which it blew up.
For its part, the Joe Biden administration issued a harsh statement on Sunday criticizing Israel for maneuvering to re-establish a settler presence at the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which had been vacated.
The Israeli government in March reversed a 2005 decision that dismantled four settlements in the West Bank. Over the weekend, the Israeli army’s top general in the West Bank signed an order incorporating Homesh into the local regional settler council, paving the way for rebuilding the outpost.
The United States expressed “deep concern” over what US State Department spokesman Mathew Miller described as Israel’s illegal policy on the outpost in occupied territory.
Miller also expressed Washington’s concern over the visit of Israel’s National Security Minister, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir, to the Esplanade of Mosques, a disputed place of worship. The site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the holiest site for Jews and is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.
“This sacred space is not to be used for political purposes, and we ask all parties to respect its sanctity,” Miller said in the statement.
According to established agreements, Jews can visit the site but not pray there. But in recent years, more and more Jewish visitors have begun to pray discreetly, stoking fears among Palestinians that Israel plans to divide or take over the compound. Ben-Gvir has long called for increased Jewish access to the site.
The minister visited the site on Sunday and declared that “we are in command” of the compound, ahead of a rare cabinet meeting in Old Jerusalem to celebrate his control of the area. Ben-Gvir’s visit was condemned by the Palestinians and neighboring Jordan, custody of the compound.
Ben-Gvir, a former West Bank settler leader and far-right activist, was convicted years ago of inciting and supporting a Jewish terror group. He now serves as Israel’s Minister of National Security, in charge of the country’s police forces.
More than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since spring 2022. Some 50 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks once morest Israelis.
Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants, although stone-throwing youths in protest of the incursions and people not taking part in the clashes have also been killed.
Israelis last week celebrated Jerusalem Day, which commemorates Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem, including the old area, in the 1967 Six-Day War. Nationalists with flags marched through the majority-Palestinian neighborhood in the old city of Jerusalem, some chanting racist slogans once morest Arabs, while hundreds of Jews visited the sensitive hilltop sanctuary.
Israel also captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. The Palestinians claim those territories for a future independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community, and regards the city as its united and permanent capital.
The tensions around the Esplanade of the Mosques have triggered outbreaks of violence in the past.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most conservative in Israel’s history, includes ultra-Orthodox and far-right nationalist parties and has made settlement construction in the West Bank one of its priorities.
Most of the international community considers the Israeli settlements, where 700,000 people live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
Fighting also broke out this month between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli attacks killed 33 people, many of them militants but also women and children. Two people were killed in Israel by rocket fire fired by militants.
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