After the attack on the Eli settlement, three Palestinians were killed in their vehicle when it was hit by missiles fired from a drone, in a previously unseen style of “targeted executions.” Palestinian Activist: Military Occupation Ends Hopes For Peace. At least 400 settlers attacked a village, burned houses and cars. Four Israeli victims. Justice and mercy: the Pope’s call to ROACO.
After the attack on the Eli settlement, three Palestinians were killed in their vehicle when it was hit by missiles fired from a drone, in a previously unseen style of “targeted executions.” Palestinian Activist: Military Occupation Ends Hopes For Peace. At least 400 settlers attacked a village, burned houses and cars. Four Israeli victims. Justice and mercy: the Pope’s call to ROACO.
Jerusalem () – More victims, new blood shed by Israelis and Palestinians in a spiral that seems to have no end, fueled by the leaders of the two countries who, in the absence of real leadership, resort to the use of force to try – in vain – annihilate the other party in an endless conflict. The last chronologically are three armed Palestinians who died inside their vehicle near Jenin hit by one or more missiles launched from a drone. This method is reminiscent of “selective” executions of the past, invoked repeatedly in recent days by various members of the Israeli government, while others claim the trio was preparing to attack a military post.
Adel Misk, Palestinian neurologist and activist, former spokesman for The Parents Circle, an association that brings together some 250 Israeli relatives and 250 Palestinians of victims of the conflict, considers that the military occupation is the knot around which the entire conflict is unraveled. “Today Jenin, before Nablus, Bethlehem,” he explained to , “wherever there is a resistance fire, there is a military intervention to quell it”. “An aggression”, he says, “that keeps 3.5 million Palestinians in check and another two million in Gaza. And this oppression generates more violence”, to which is added that now the settlers “feel more free to act and attack, as happened yesterday with 400 of them who attacked and set fire to houses and cars, with their faces uncovered, because they don’t have to be afraid to hide their identity, and with weapons in hand.” At the international level, he concluded, there is “great disinterest”, but continuing in this direction will lead “towards civil war”.
An escalation of violence and bloodshed certified by the figures published by the United Nations: at least 27 Israelis have died at the hands of Palestinians since the beginning of 2023. In the same period, the Israeli armed forces and settlers killed 156 Palestinians, including 26 children.
Regarding the attacks, and the victims, in the Holy Land “the attention” of Pope Francis remains high, as he confirmed this morning when receiving in audience the participants of the 96th Plenary Assembly of ROACO (Meeting of Works in Support of the Eastern Churches) and the Youth Conference. The Pontiff recalled God’s “peace plans” in the Bible, which nevertheless shows us from the beginning the “violence of brother against brother: Cain and Abel, the slaughter of the innocent”, as has also happened for some time among Israelis and Palestinians. The Pope stressed, however, that the criterion is not that of revenge with the murder of Cain, his spared life is “the first act of justice and mercy.”
Words of peace, which contrast with what is happening in the area. The drone operation is just the latest act in a long series of attacks and clashes in recent days, adding to retaliatory actions by the military with the Star of David against Palestinian villages, in response to the murder in the West Bank of four Israeli settlers in the Eli settlement. The Palestinians denounce that, in a crossfire between Israelis and Palestinians, a 27-year-old boy, Omar Qatin, was killed during a raid by at least 400 Jewish settlers in a village near Ramallah. The attackers set fire or attempted to set fire to at least 60 cars and 30 buildings. Three other Palestinians were injured.
Other attacks by Israeli settlers linked to the religious far-right later struck Huwara, Luban Sharqia and other Palestinian towns, injuring dozens of Palestinians. According to a rough estimate, 120 Palestinian vehicles were also set on fire. Palestinian Sadil Naghnegha, 15, also died yesterday in a hospital bed, seriously injured in the head by a stray bullet when she was in her house during a raid carried out two days earlier by soldiers of the Israeli army in Jenin. .
At the same time, Israel was celebrating the funerals of Nachman Mordoff, Elisha Anteman, both 17, Harel Masood, 21, and Ofer Fayerman, 64, the settlers killed in the armed attack in the West Bank. In response to the shooting and deaths, the Israeli government gave the green light for the construction of 1,000 new homes in the Eli settlement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “agreed to move forward immediately” with the planning, though they did not provide any other timetable. “Our response to terror,” the prime minister said, “is to hit hard and build on our land.” It is not clear if the new units come from the 4,560 already proposed throughout the occupied West Bank or if they are independent, as speculated by the Jerusalem Post.
