Israel has dropped additional forces and is strengthening its wall and fence with the occupied territories after four deadly attacks have claimed the lives of 14 in Israel, most of them civilians, in the past three weeks. Wednesday’s death toll rises to 17 as Palestinians continue to escalate. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said human rights lawyer Muhammad Hassan Muhammad Assaf, 34, “died after being shot in the chest by the Israeli occupation army during an attack in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.” The Israeli army did not confirm that his lawyer had been shot. In the evening, the ministry said Israeli forces shot and killed a teenager “during their attack on Hussein” in the South West Bank. The military said in a statement that soldiers had shot dead a Palestinian suspect who “threw a Molotov cocktail at them”, adding that the troops “used live ammunition to stop the imminent threat”. A community leader in Hussein said the dead man was 16-year-old Kusai Hammara. Hundreds of Palestinians rose up in the area after the incident, the army said. Violent clashes erupted earlier in the day in Nablus, where Israeli forces were accompanying a work crew that had arrived to repair Joseph’s tomb. The site is sacred to Jews and was destroyed in an act of vandalism last weekend. Israeli troops running on the city streets in an armored convoy opened fire as a crowd threw stones and incendiary devices at them. “Hundreds of Palestinians staged a violent uprising, burning tires and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers, who responded with” riot gear and live ammunition, “the army said. Witnesses said Assaf was standing on the side of the road, having just picked up his nieces at school, when he was hit by a bullet as Israeli forces fired as they were leaving Nablus. Assaf was lamented as a “fierce defender of his people” by his employer, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Resistance Committee. Following the news of his death, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israeli soldiers of “killing for the sake of murder, with the permission of the occupying Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, without the slightest appreciation of international law.” . . Bennett has warned that Israel is now “under attack” and is determined to arrest suspected militants. Israel’s latest major offensive was a fierce shooting attack last Thursday in Tel Aviv that claimed three lives and injured more than a dozen others. The gunman, from Jenin, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with Israeli forces after a manhunt overnight. Israeli police said Wednesday that special forces had arrested a Palestinian man in Kubar and three others in Silwad, a village north of Ramallah, who were planning an attack on Israelis. Internal security service Shin Bet reported that the suspect Kubar, identified as Moath Hamed, had escaped from the Palestinian detention center, where he was being held for his role in the murder of an Israeli in 2015. Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had carried out “counter-terrorism operations” in the Palestinian militant stronghold of Jenin and other West Bank cities. In the city of Tulkarem, Israeli border police said they had shot and wounded “a suspected terrorist” who had escaped from special forces trying to capture him. Bennett had vowed on Sunday that “we will not withstand such an attack on a place that is sacred to us – Easter Eve”, the Jewish holiday. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 31 people were injured in the area around Nablus and a nearby village, 10 of whom were shot dead. The shrine, where the Jews say the biblical patriarch Joseph is buried, is a frequent point of fire between Israelis and Palestinians. It was partially destroyed in 2000 during a Palestinian uprising and also set on fire in 2015. Palestinian authorities consider the area as an Islamic archeological site where a respected cleric was buried two centuries ago. The clashes took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and ahead of the start of Easter on Friday, a clash that could escalate tensions around shrines in Jerusalem’s Old City. Last year, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, fired rockets at Jerusalem following unrest in the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, sparking a devastating 11-day war.
