OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- A shooting at a settlement in the Silwan neighborhood in occupied East Al-Quds on Saturday wounded two Zionist settlers.
The City of David settlement is located within the predominantly Palestinian district of Silwan, on the southern side of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Security sources told Haaretz the suspect is a 13-year-old resident of the area, and that he was shot but not killed. Authorities have yet to reveal the identity of the shooter.
Those wounded are a 22-year old off-duty Israeli soldier and his 47-year old father, the newspaper added. They have both been hospitalized.
The occupying regime’s security services raised the security level to the highest alert after the shooting, which was the second in two days after a fatal shooting on Friday killed seven Zionists outside a building used as a synagogue in the settlement of Neve Yaakov in East Al-Quds.
Israeli security forces martyred Friday’s shooter, a Palestinian, and detained 42 members of his family.
Later on Saturday, a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying that hardline prime minister Netanyahu would bring up a series of repressive measures for approval in the cabinet the evening.
The proposed measures, Ravid said, include a law to deport families of Palestinians involved in retaliatory operations and sealing of their homes, arresting their family members, and speeding up the granting of gun permits to Zionists.
The shootings on Friday and Saturday came a day after Israeli forces martyred 10 Palestinians in the West Bank, nine of them during a large-scale raid in the Jenin refugee camp.
The occupying regime’s troops have martyred 31 people this month in a sign of continued growing violence against Palestinians.
Last year, more Palestinians were martyred by Zionist forces in the West Bank and East Al-Quds than in any single calendar year since the Second Intifada.
At least 220 people were martyred in Israeli attacks across the occupied territories in 2022, including 48 children. Of the total toll, 167 were from the West Bank and East Al-Quds, and 53 were from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas said in a statement that the operation at the synagogue was “a natural response to the Jenin massacre, the desecration of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and escalating Israeli crimes and aggression against our nation.
It conveys the message to the occupying regime that Palestinians’ willpower cannot be undermined, their determination is steely, and their resistance is intensifying despite all the pains and sacrifices they are going through”, the resistance movement said.
“Our people will continue to strike the enemy’s sites, barracks, and settlements. Resistance will remain the viable option of our people until full liberation of our land, sacred sites and restoration of all our legitimate rights. The qualitative operation took place at the illegal settlement of Nabi Yacov built on lands belonging to the Palestinian village of Beit Hanina.”
Islamic Jihad also praised the operation, saying in a statement that it “came at the right time and place to avenge the blood of martyrs in the Jenin camp and the West Bank. It was a natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupying regime, and violation of our sanctities.”
“The operation sent the strong message to the Israeli regime that the resistance front is fully prepare; it will not take long for our people to retaliate, and that the Tel Aviv regime’s heinous crimes will not go unpunished at all,” it said.
The al-Quds Brigades, which is the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, stated that such operations express “the unity among different strata of the Palestinian society, the strong willpower of the Palestinian nation, and total rejection of the Israeli occupation.”
It added that the East al-Quds operation is “a natural and clear response to the presence of Israeli forces on the land of Palestine, and their brutal practices against Palestinian people in Jenin, Nablus, Gaza, Al-Quds and elsewhere.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the East al-Quds operation is the embodiment of the willpower of the Palestinian nation in confronting the Israeli occupation.
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) said the operation represents a practical and effective response to the crimes of the Israeli regime in Jenin camp and elsewhere across the Palestinian territories.
For its part, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a statement that the heroic operation in East al-Quds marks the beginning of a new phase of comprehensive popular resistance against Israel.