Israeli army kills Palestinian, settlers march to illegal outpost

A Palestinian child has been killed by Israeli forces in the Aqabet Jaber refugee camp in Jericho, as a settler march to an illegal outpost near the occupied city of Nablus brought more violence to the West Bank.

Mohammad Fayez Balhan, who was 15 years old, was shot in the head, chest and stomach on Monday.“They shot him in the head,” the teen’s aunt Maysoon said. “What is going to happen to our people? What will happen to us?”

The Israeli military said that it had been operating in Jericho’s Aqabat Jabr refugee camp in an attempt to apprehend Palestinians it suspected of attacks against Israelis, and that its forces had responded to being fired at by the suspects.

Settler march
The incident comes as the Israeli army guards thousands of Israeli settlers marching to the abandoned illegal outpost of Evyatar to call on the Israeli government to legalise the outpost and to “denounce the increased attacks on settlements in recent weeks”.

The mother of two Israeli sisters killed last week in one such attack died from her injuries, hospital officials said on Monday.Abu Shammala added that the Palestinians had burned tyes and threw stones, and that groups of settlers had begun to leave the site of the march demanding the legalisation of the outpost, which lasted for three hours.

“There is still a heavy deployment of Israeli soldiers, as it is estimated that about 1,000 Israeli soldiers were deployed to secure the settlers’ march, according to Israeli sources,” Abu Shammala said.The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it considered the march “a dangerous escalation and provocation of the Palestinian people, and an extension of the incitement calls of the Israeli right and the fascist right to deepen settlement at the expense of Palestinian lands, and it has dangerous repercussions on the situation in the arena of conflict”.