At Least One Settler Killed, Four Injured

‘Heroic Operation’ in Haifa Draws Palestinian Praise

Date: 03 March 2025 - 21:43

News ID: ۱۳۷۵۴۳

HAIFA (Dispatches) -- A settler was killed and four others wounded in a stabbing attack in the northern occupied city of Haifa on Monday, officials said.

Israeli police said the attack took place at a bus and train station in which three settlers were seriously injured.

They said the assailant was an Israeli “citizen” from a nearby Arab Druze town who had returned from abroad in May and that the attack was still being investigated.

Other reports said the man who had been killed was a Palestinian citizen living in a village under the Israeli occupation in the north.

Eyewitnesses reported chaotic scenes as Zionist forces mistakenly shot at an Israeli settler, believing him to be one of the attackers.

The attack came as negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas over Gaza’s ceasefire stalled after the deal’s first phase ended over the weekend.

On Sunday, the Zionist regime blocked the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza after a disagreement with Hamas over extending the ceasefire.

The Palestinian resistance movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad hailed the operation.

“This operation comes as a natural response to the ongoing crimes of the occupation against our people in the West Bank, Gaza, and Al-Quds,” Hamas said in a statement, citing Israel’s escalation of killings, destruction, and forced displacement in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank.

Hamas also condemned Israel for the “ongoing suffocating siege on Gaza, the projects aimed at emptying the Jordan Valley of Palestinians, and the continued desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The Hamas statement further said, “The resistance will continue until the liberation of the land and sanctities, the expulsion of the occupier, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital.”

Elsewhere in the statement, Hamas called upon the Palestinians across the occupied territories to “escalate confrontation with the enemy and engage in resistance by all possible means.”

In a similar statement, the Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad praised the “heroic operation” in Haifa.

The operation, it said, was “a natural response to the ongoing crimes, genocide, and war crimes committed by the criminal entity and its settlers against our people.”

“It reaffirms our people’s commitment to their land, homeland, and the path of resistance.”

The operation also confirms that “all Israeli military campaigns serve no purpose other than repression, abuse, and massacres”, it added.
“Our people’s determination to respond to the occupation’s crimes proves the failure of the entity’s security apparatus in achieving its illusionary sense of security.”
Anti-Israeli operations have surged across the occupied territories in recent weeks.
On February 27, more than a dozen Israeli settlers were injured after a Palestinian carried out a car-ramming operation in the occupied territories.
Multiple bus explosions earlier rocked the town of Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, instilling fear among settlers and bringing the city to a halt.
The Tel Aviv bus blasts notably began following 16 months of Israeli campaign of genocide in Gaza and the ongoing aggression in the West Bank.
Israeli officials said there are suspicions that the bus explosion attacks are linked to Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.
Later, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military to carry out an “intensive operation” in the West Bank.
At least 40,000 Palestinians have already been displaced in Jenin and nearby Tulkarm since January.
The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs and expatriates warned of Israeli plans to annex the West Bank, and expropriate vast swathes of land in the occupied territory.
The ministry, in a statement released on Sunday evening, censured deliberations by Israel’s so-called ministerial committee for legislation for land grab in the West Bank under the so-called “Greater Jerusalem” project, and its intention to present the plan for approval to the Knesset.
The ministry called for serious international action to prevent the implementation of this plan, warning of its devastating impact on any chances of resolving the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict through peaceful means.