Palestinians Go on Strike in West Bank to Protest Deadly Raid (2024)

Violence in the West Bank has sharply escalated in recent months.

It was not the first shutdown in the occupied West Bank — where about 500,000 Israeli settlers live alongside roughly 2.7 million Palestinians — as an act of protest in recent months. The Israeli authorities have tightened restrictions in the territory since Oct. 7, canceling thousands of work permits that allowed Palestinians to work in Israel and squeezing the West Bank’s economy.

And violence in the West Bank has sharply escalated in recent months. Nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces there since the Israel-Hamas war started, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Deadly violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has also reached record levels since Oct. 7.

Early on Sunday, two Palestinian males in their late teens were fatally shot by Israeli forces, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Israeli military said one of them had opened fire at soldiers at a military post north of Hebron and the other had tried to stab them.

Later on Sunday morning, an Israeli man was slightly injured in an explosion in the West Bank, according to the Israeli emergency services. Video footage shared by Israeli news outlets showed him kicking down a Palestinian flag on a pole in a field near a settlement. The flag appeared to have been booby-trapped.

Those incidents came after the Israeli military’s hourslong raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp, in the northern part of the West Bank, on Saturday. The military called the raid a counterterrorism operation and said the 10 killed were militants, a claim that could not be immediately verified.

The Palestinian Ministry said that the Israeli operation in Nur Shams was responsible for the deaths of at least 14 people, including a 15-year-old boy. The Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, and the armed group Lion’s Den, labeled the operation a “heinous” crime and called on residents of the occupied territory to protest the raid.

The United States has called on Israel to increase commercial engagement with the West Bank, arguing that doing so was important for both Palestinians and Israelis. The war has also sent shock waves through Israel’s economy, which shrank nearly 20 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

The House, with a bipartisan vote, approves an aid package for Israel.

The House approved assistance to Israel by a vote of 366 to 58. Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan and a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, voted “present.”

Thirty-seven liberal Democrats opposed the aid package for Israel because the legislation placed no conditions on how Israel could use American aid, even though there have been thousands of civilian casualties and Gaza faces the risk of famine.

That was a relatively small sliver of opposition given that left-wing lawmakers had pressed their colleagues to vote “no” on the bill to send a message to President Biden about the depth of anger within his political coalition over his backing for Israel’s tactics in the war.

“Sending more weapons to the Netanyahu government will make the U.S. even more responsible for atrocities and the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is now in a season of famine,” said Representative Jonathan L. Jackson, Democrat of Illinois, speaking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “The United States Congress must be the moral compass. I continue to call for the release of all prisoners and hostages. I continue to pray and work for peace, security and stability.”

The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as Tuesday and send it to President Biden’s desk, capping a tortured journey through Congress.

The Palestinian Authority’s president threatens to reconsider relations with the United States.

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said that the resolution was part of an effort to assert its right to self-determination. The United States, the only nation among the council’s 15 members that wielded its veto power, said the recognition of a Palestinian state must come as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel to end the 75-year-old conflict. Britain and Switzerland abstained from the vote.

Mr. Abbas also accused the United States of abandoning its promises to work toward a two-state solution and of funding Israel’s war in Gaza, which Gazan health officials say has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure.

Deadly Israeli airstrikes again hit Rafah.

The Israeli military would not immediately comment on the strikes. It has said the goal of its offensive in Gaza is to eradicate Hamas, the armed group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades.

“It was like an earthquake,” Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who is sheltering with his family in a tent in a large Rafah encampment, said of the shaking from the strikes.

The first strike hit at a little past midnight, shaking the earth and lighting up the night sky, and a second one came soon after, he said. “When we hear these strikes we don’t know what to do,” he said. “Everyone is saying the same thing, ‘Where can we go?’”

President Biden and other world leaders have urged Israel not to invade Rafah because it would make an already dire humanitarian crisis even worse.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not heeded those calls and claims a ground offensive is necessary to “complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions” and to destroy its tunnel networks.

Saturday’s strikes stoked fears for Palestinians in Rafah that an invasion could be imminent.

In a briefing to the Security Council this week, Secretary-General António Guterres said that Israel’s military offensive in Rafah would “compound this humanitarian catastrophe.”

Rahaf Al-Madhoun, 17, was streaming live on TikTok to talk about the living conditions in Rafah, when the first airstrike hit very close, she said. She stopped to collect herself before continuing. Then she described the terror sown by the strikes and the ever-present buzz of surveillance drones overhead.

“We’re at a loss, I swear,” she said. “The fear itself is killing us.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.