RAMALLAH (Dispatches) –
Zionist troops killed two Palestinians during a confrontation that erupted early Monday when troops entered a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said.
The two men were killed in the village of Kafr Dan near the northern city of Jenin. The Zionist military said it entered Kafr Dan late Sunday to demolish the houses of two Palestinian gunmen who allegedly killed a Zionist soldier in September. The military claimed troops came under heavy fire and fired back at the shooters.
It was the latest bloodshed in the region that has seen Zionist-Palestinian tensions surge for months. On Monday, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem said 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2004, a period of intense violence that came during a Palestinian uprising.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified those martyred as Samer Houshiyeh, 21, and Fouad Abed, 25. Houshiyeh was shot several times in the chest, according to Samer Attiyeh, the director of the Ibn Sina Hosipital in Jenin. Attiyeh initially said Abed was 17, but the ministry later gave his age as 25.
The resistance group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, later claimed Houshiyeh as a member. The group, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, published an older photo in which Houshiyeh had posed with rifles. Video on social media showed his body wrapped with the armed group’s flag as his mother and other mourners bid farewell.
The new fatalities bring to 224 the total number of Palestinians killed by Zionist troops from the beginning of 2022, including 59 from the city of Jenin, the Palestinian Wafa news agency said.
During past months, the occupying regime’s forces and its illegal settlers have noticeably intensified their attacks against Palestinians across the occupied territories.
The Middle East Eye news and analysis website also reported that 2022 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Tel Aviv-blockaded Gaza Strip, since the Second Palestinian Intifada (Uprising) which ended in 2005.
More than 220 Palestinians were killed at the hands of Zionist troops throughout the year, the MEE reported, saying 167 of the victims were shot dead in the West Bank, and 53 others in Gaza. The fatalities included 48 children, the report said.
Analysts interpret the heightened Zionist brutality as a means of forcibly expelling Palestinians from their lands and making way for expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian rights advocacy group says the Zionist troops arrested a total of 7,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, last year.
The figure was released on Sunday in a report issued by the Palestine Center for Prisoners’ Studies (PCPS).
“Israel arrested 865 Palestinian children, including 142 under the age of 12, in 2022,” Riyad al-Ashqar, the director of the Center, said, adding that some of those children had not even reached nine years of age, and all detainees were subject to abuse, torture or humiliation.
The official noted that the Zionist troops, in one such case, arrested the two-year-old Hammoudi Amash at the Barta’a checkpoint, claiming that he insulted the Zionist troops stationed there.