Palestinian dies during Israeli raid in West Bank

WEST BANK (Agencies): The Palestinian news agency has reported that a 20-year-old has died of wounds a month after being shot during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank.

The WAFA news agency said on Saturday that Ezzedin Kanan, from the town of Jaba near Jenin, was shot in the head on July 3 during one of the most intense Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank since an armed Palestinian uprising against Israel’s open-ended occupation ended two decades ago.

An offshoot of the secular nationalist Fatah party, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, claimed Kanan as one of its “fiercest fighters” and pledged to avenge his loss. Armed and masked fighters flanked the mourning procession for Kanan as his body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag and adorned with a headband from the group, was carried through his home village of Jaba.

Kanan’s death brings the total to 14 people killed in the raid, which lasted two days and included air attacks, hundreds of ground troops and bulldozers that were used to raze roads and buildings.

The army claimed to have inflicted heavy damage on fighter groups in the Jenin refugee camp and that it had confiscated thousands of weapons, bomb-making materials and caches of money during the raid. Since early 2022, Israel has been carrying out near-daily raids in the West Bank in response to a series of Palestinian attacks. It says the raids are meant to crack down on Palestinian fighters and said they are necessary because the Palestinian Authority is too weak.

The continuing violence in the West Bank has surged with more than 170 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the start of 2023, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Palestinians say such violence is the inevitable result of 56 years of illegal occupation and the absence of any political process with Israel.

They also point to increased illegal settlement construction in the West Bank and violence by settlers. The United Nations Middle East envoy told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the upswing in violence is being fuelled by growing despair about the future, with the Palestinians still seeking an independent state.

“The lack of progress towards a political horizon that addressed the core issues driving the conflict has left a dangerous and volatile vacuum, filled by extremists on all sides,” Tor Wennesland said. Palestinian daily newspapers also highlighted confrontations in occupied East Jerusalem during the week including an attack on Muslim worshippers on their way to attend Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque as well as the suppression of a weekly protest in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Israel captured the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, in 1967. Since then, it has built settlements housing hundreds of thousands of Israelis on the occupied lands, which Palestinians seek as part of their future state.

International law explicitly prohibits occupying powers from transferring their civilian population into occupied territories. A UN expert has previously called Israeli settlements a “war crime“.