Zionists Destroy Home of Palestinian
WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist troops on Saturday destroyed the home of a Palestinian for allegedly killing a Zionist settler last year, sparking clashes.
Explosives destroyed the apartment of Omar Jaradat in Silat al-Harithiya village, near the flashpoint town of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, according to a statement by the Zionist regime’s army.
It said Palestinians clashed with Zionist troops, throwing stones and firebombs, which the occupying regime troops responded to with semi-automatic fire.
Two Palestinians were wounded, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
The clashes add to tensions in the occupied territories and the West Bank as a large-scale manhunt continued for a pair of Palestinians suspected of killing three Zionists in an attack Thursday night near Tel Aviv.
Over the past month police and Palestinians have also clashed at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Al-Quds’ Old City.
Explosives punched a hole in the pink exterior wall of Jaradat’s apartment and blew out interior walls, leaving the floors strewn with grey rubble.
Zionist troops have previously demolished three other homes of Jaradat family members in Silat al-Harithiya.
The regime regularly destroys the homes of individuals it blames for retaliatory attacks on Zionists.
The practice has been condemned by critics as a form of collective punishment.
Around 475,000 Zionists settlers live in the West Bank in communities widely regarded as illegal under international law, alongside around 2.9 million Palestinians.
The occupying regime is set to approve plans for the construction of thousands of new illegal settler units in the occupied West Bank, despite global outcry over the regime’s relentless land grab and settlement expansion activities in the Palestinian territories.
The so-called Israeli Civil Administration, a military body, in a statement on Friday, said the Higher Planning Committee would meet next Thursday to give green light to the building of 3,988 new settler units.
The regime’s interior minister Ayelet Shaked, a staunch advocate of the settler-colonialism project, also took to Twitter to announce that a planning committee would convene next week to approve 4,000 homes, calling it a “basic, required and obvious thing”.
Zionist regime officials hope to advance the illegal settlement project before an expected visit by U.S. President Joe Biden to the occupied territories at the end of June.
‘Enemy Threats Not
to Stop Us’
The head of the Palestinian Hamas movement’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, said that the enemy’s threats to assassinate resistance movement leaders “will not deter us from defending our land and our sanctity, our right to return, and the release of our prisoners.”
In a press statement, Haniyeh said, “Our people did not and will not stand silent while the targeting of our sanctities continues, along with the underestimation of our people and the feelings of our Arab and Islamic nation.”
Haniyeh’s statements came after three settlers were killed, and others wounded, in an alleged stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian youth in the Elad area, near Tel Aviv on Thursday evening
After the operation, which also came hours after a major storming by occupation forces and settlers to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Zionists called for the assassination of Hamas leaders.
Haniyeh said, “Al-Aqsa is a major red line, not subject to any bargaining, and not divisible by two. It is a purely Islamic mosque and an inalienable historical right for our nation and people. This is the covenant, the oath and the charter.”