Following the surprise attack by Hamas last weekend that left 1,200 Israelis dead, Israel has unleashed an unprecedented bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip: According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the air strikes have killed nearly 1,800 Palestinians, including 583 children. In a sign of the ground offensive to come, the Israel Defense Forces issued a warning to 1.1 million residents of the northern half of Gaza to “evacuate,” an order that the United Nations has described as “impossible.”
But as Israel ramps up the siege of Gaza, violence has spread beyond the 140-square-mile territory. Since Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry states that Israeli forces have killed at least 46 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian territory controlled by Fatah, a rival faction to Hamas. On Friday, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli Border Police after they reportedly tried to blow up a border wall near the Israeli border. Nine more Palestinians were killed on Friday in clashes in the West Bank following protests against the Gaza siege.
Unlike in Gaza, where the IDF is bombing Palestinians under the authority of the Israeli government, civilians are also carrying out attacks in the West Bank. Reuters reports that masked Israeli settlers have fired at citizens and ambulances in the district of Nablus, about 30 miles north of Jerusalem. An Israeli police spokesperson in the district of Judeah confirmed a shooting on Friday that was caught on video in which an Israeli settler in the district can be seen firing at a Palestinian at point-blank range. As the Palestinian man crawls away, an IDF soldier escorts the shooter off the scene. On Thursday, a father and son were killed at a funeral in the town of Qusra when Israeli settlers shot at the procession for four Palestinians killed in the area by settlers the day before. This violence has not been condemned by the Israeli government. Earlier in the week, Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that his ministry will distribute 10,000 rifles to Israeli settlers as the conflict intensifies. “We will turn the world upside down so that towns are protected,” Ben-Gvir said.
With massive protests in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, security officials fear that Hamas’s call for a “day of rage” could cause the conflict to spread in the region. So far, those fears have not been realized, though Jordanian forces did tear-gas protesters on Friday to stop them from demonstrating at the border with Israel. But in southern Lebanon, a videographer working for Reuters, Issam Abdallah, was killed by an Israeli air strike on Friday.
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