JENIN, Palestinian Territories (Dispatches) – Fresh clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians rocked the West Bank city of Jenin Tuesday as a Palestinian stabbed a Zionist police officer in a retaliatory attack before being shot dead.
Israeli troops launched a fourth day of incursion around Jenin after a Palestinian from the district shot and killed three Zionists in a Tel Aviv bar last week in an attack that shook the occupying regime.
Extremist prime minister Naftali Bennett overnight visited the reopened bar that was the scene of Thursday’s retaliation, which sparked an all-night manhunt before the shooter was shot dead in a firefight.
Jenin residents told AFP Tuesday that new fighting had broken out after multiple gun battles in recent days.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa said “clashes erupted” between young Palestinian men and Zionist troops “who fired live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at them”.
Israeli forces had arrested four people from Jenin and the nearby village of al-Yamoun, it added.
The latest incident in Occupied Palestine came Tuesday in the Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, where police said an officer was checking a person who aroused his suspicion when “the attacker pulled out a knife and attacked the officer”.
The officer was hospitalized with wounds from the attack using a kitchen knife.
The assailant was in his 40s and from the flashpoint city of Al-Khalil in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said.
Ashkelon said it deployed extra police on motorcycles to patrol schools and commercial areas.
Israeli troops and police have stepped up military operations amid a rising tide of resistance over the past three weeks in which four shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks have left 14 Zionists dead.
In another major attack, in Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv, a Palestinian from the Jenin area killed five Zionists before being gunned down.
Over the same period, Israeli forces have martyred 15 Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.
On Sunday, Zionist forces martyred a Palestinian woman who stabbed a policeman in the center of Al-Khalil, a powder keg where around 1,000 Jewish settlers are stationed under heavy military protection among 200,000 Palestinians.
The same day, the army shot and martyred an unarmed Palestinian woman who they said failed to heed warning shots near the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
The rise in Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance comes during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and days before the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter.
On Monday, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah hailed acts of heroism by Palestinians against the occupying regime of Israel, saying the Lebanese resistance movement will continue to stand with the Palestinian people to achieve victory.
Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised speech during which he addressed the latest developments in Palestine and expressed Hezbollah’s solidarity with the Palestinians in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.
“We must stand with all reverence and pride before the heroism of the men, youth, women, children and elderly of occupied Palestine,” Nasrallah said.”What is happening in occupied Palestine has great implications regarding the conflict with the enemy, and the future of the Israeli entity.”
Addressing the Zionist regime, Nasrallah said, “If you are betting on the despair and frustration of the Palestinian people, then you are delusional. If you think that the Arab betrayal will lead to the retreat of Palestinian youths, then you are delusional.”
Nasrallah said the occupying regime of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians would make them more determined in their resistance against the regime’s occupation.
What is happening in and around occupied Palestine needs a “long pause, and more support and solidarity,” Nasrallah said, expressing “absolute support” for the Palestinian people and their resistance.
“We are their partners in this battle and in making victory,” he added.