Two Israeli men was fatally shot at a busy intersection in the West Bank on Sunday, hours after a violent confrontation elsewhere in the Israeli-occupied territory left seven Palestinians and a member of Israel’s paramilitary border police dead.At least two more journalists killed after their vehicle is targeted in an Israeli air strike, including the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh.
In Sunday’s drive-by shooting, assailants fired through the victim’s front windshield, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. Paramedics arriving at the scene in the central West Bank found the man unresponsive in his car.
The Israeli army said security forces were searching the area for the shooter. Israeli media reported that security forces found an abandoned car that was likely used to carry out the attack, and the suspect fled on foot.
Hours earlier, a deadly confrontation erupted when Israeli security forces were on patrol to search for roadside bombs in Jenin, a town and adjacent refugee camp by the same name in the northern West Bank.
A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle of the paramilitary border police, killing a policewoman and wounding three others, police said.
An Israeli military helicopter targeted Palestinians in the area who were throwing explosives at Israeli vehicles and extracted the Israeli forces, the Israeli army said. Seven Palestinians were killed in the airstrike, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Mujahhid Nazal, a doctor at nearby clinic, said he heard a “strong explosion” and rushed to the scene of the airstrike. “It was a really dire situation, seven young men were lying on the ground,” he said.
The events followed a dramatic surge in deadly military raids and increase in restrictions on Palestinian residents across the West Bank during the Israel-Hamas war.
Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the territory has also reached record highs, according to the United Nations.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed 329 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’ cross-border attack in southern Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage.
Most of the Palestinians were killed during shootouts in the West Bank that the Israeli military says began during operations to arrest Palestinian gunmen.
Oren Ziv, an Israeli journalist for +972 magazine, spoke to Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat in Tel Aviv about Israel’s continued targeting of journalists. Here’s what he had to say:
“Unfortunately, although Israel declares publicly [that] they allow freedom of speech, through the years we’ve seen again and again, especially while covering events in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem, but also inside ‘48 Israel‘, that in almost every event, if you’re talking about Palestinian gatherings, and of course, protests, we’ve seen attacks against the media.
It can be small things like pushing us away and using tear gas and other weapons against us. Or, of course, there are more severe tools.
But the general trend is very clear. It’s preventing, again and again, media crews from doing their work, even when they’re marked as press, even when they stand aside in big groups.
I think this can be allowed because of the general way the Israeli government, but unfortunately, also the public, doesn’t see [Palestinians] as humans, and this also allows [for] the attacks against journalists, especially in Gaza.”