Peace is still far away. A car crash and knife attack left one person dead and three others injured this Tuesday, November 18 in the south of the occupied West Bank, Israeli emergency services and the Israeli army announced. The attack took place at the Gush Etzion crossing, located at the entrance to the Israeli settlement, on the road between the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, in the south of the occupied West Bank.
The location has been the site of several anti-Israel attacks since late 2015. Additionally, earlier this week, extremist settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Jabaa, near Bethlehem, after Israeli security forces destroyed and evacuated a Jewish settlement outpost known as Tzour Misgavi, in the Gush Etzion settlement block.
Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, announced the death of a man in his thirties and said its service had evacuated three other people to hospitals in Jerusalem, including a woman around 40 years old and a 15-year-old boy. “presents penetrating wounds”. Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem said in a statement “a woman was shot” has been hospitalized in serious condition. According to local media, he was injured in an attack by soldiers who opened fire on the attackers.
The army claims it is “soldiers eliminated two terrorists on the spot” and the explosives “have found” in their vehicle. “Israeli military troops are carrying out searches and setting up roadblocks around the area.”said the soldier. “This is the second attack on the Gush Etzion road junction in a year that resulted in serious consequences”Yaron Rosental, president of the regional council of Gush Etzion, a residential block in the area where the attack occurred, told reporters.
“With the army, we will also make terrorists and everyone around them pay a very heavy price, and we will also strengthen colonialism.”added Yaron Rosental. The Hamas movement and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, considered terrorist organizations by the United States, the European Union and Israel, welcomed the attack in separate statements.
More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in the West Bank in settlements considered illegal by the UN under international law, among some three million Palestinians. Violence has exploded in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza sparked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in Israel. According to official Israeli data, at least 43 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, were killed there in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military strikes.
At the same time, at least 1,006 Palestinians, both fighters and civilians, were killed there by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to a tally based on data from the Palestinian Authority. This violence has not stopped after a ceasefire was implemented in Gaza since October 10. According to the UN, the West Bank also experienced an unprecedented peak in violence in nearly two decades in October.
Updated at 17:13. with statements from the Army, Yaron Rosenthal, and more context.
