Israeli forces have killed at least 29 Palestinians since Israel’s hardline government, widely regarded as the most right-wing in the country’s history, took office on December 29.
Israeli troops killed at least 11 Palestinians and wounded more than 100 on Wednesday (February 22, 2023) during a gun battle during a daylight raid into the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the raid as a “state terrorism and a dangerous escalation of the conflict.” Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, said its “patience is running out.”
Yesterday’s raid is the biggest since Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline new government took office in December with ultranationalists in key security posts, including some, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has expressed support for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish Israeli who killed 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994.
The latest violence caps a month of escalating violence, with Israeli commandos killing 10 Palestinians during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in late January and a Palestinian gunman shooting dead seven Israelis outside a synagogue in an East Jerusalem settlement the next day.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs data shows that 2021 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza War when the city of Jenin and its refugee camp re-emerged as a center of armed resistance, and Nablus followed suit.
This year is already on course to surpass 2021 if the number of deaths stays at the same level, and there is now the potential for a full-scale uprising among Palestinians.
