WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime has announced plans to provide illegal settlers with firearms and weapons in response to the recent retaliatory operations by Palestinians, which killed at least seven settlers in the occupied Al-Quds, amid escalating violence in the occupied territories.
Speaking after an emergency meeting, Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a “strong, swift and precise” response to the latest retaliatory attacks and said his cabinet, comprised of a group of hardline politicians, had decided to expedite gun permits for Israeli people to defend against Palestinian street attacks.
Netanyahu also announced that his cabinet had decided on a series of steps to “strengthen settlements” in the coming week, without providing further details.
The threats came hours after two retaliatory operations. In a shooting operation carried out on Friday near a synagogue in a settlement in the occupied East Al-Quds seven settlers were killed and 10 others wounded. Two settlers were also injured in another shooting attack in the same area on Saturday.
On Thursday, the Zionist regime’s forces raided the city of Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp in the north of the Tel Aviv-occupied West Bank, gunning down nine Palestinians.
Palestinian resistance groups hailed the retaliatory operation near the synagogue, describing it as a “direct response” to the deadliest Zionist military raid in the occupied West Bank in years.
On Sunday, a young Palestinian man has succumbed to the wounds he suffered days earlier after Zionist troops carried out the raid in Jenin.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 24-year-old Omar Tareq Saadi died of his serious injuries after being shot in the stomach by the troops during the violent raid on Thursday, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said Saadi was a former prisoner, who spent about 3 years in the Zionist regime’s jails.
On Saturday night, Zionist troops shot and killed a young Palestinian man over an alleged shooting attempt in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military, in a statement released before midnight on Saturday, alleged that a Palestinian man armed with a handgun was killed near the illegal Kedumim settlement.
Karam Ali Ahmad Salman, 18, was shot dead by “the Israeli occupation near the settlement of Kedumim,” the Palestinian health ministry reported.
According to local Israeli officials, he was spotted on the settlement’s surveillance cameras approaching Kedumim’s northern neighborhood at around 11:50 p.m. local time (2150 GMT).
The coordinator for the settlement and another guard reached the scene and purportedly spotted that the Palestinian man had pulled out a handgun.
Earlier on Saturday, two illegal settlers were wounded in a shooting attack in occupied East Al-Quds, a day after the seven people were killed in an attack near a synagogue on the outskirts of the city.
An independent Irish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) criticized the European Union (EU) for its silence on Zionist crimes, as the occupying regime continues to commit atrocities against Palestinians across the occupied territories.
Mick Wallace made the remarks in a post on his Twitter account, after the EU released its Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2022, in which there was no mention of the plight of Palestinians.
Wallace denounced the annual report as” selective,” noting that it has ignored the persecution and killing of Palestinians by the Zionist regime.