West Bank – The Israeli military set up roadblocks, cordoned off Palestinian villages and deployed reinforcements to the West Bank on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli settler was killed in a drive-by shooting by suspected Palestinian gunmen.
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Israeli troops have combed villages around the city of Nablus searching for the suspects in Tuesday’s attack near the Havat Gilad settlement, a military statements aid.
In the attack, Raziel Shevah, 35, was shot multiple times from a passing vehicle and was hospitalized in critical condition. He later died of his wounds.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement vowing Israel’s security services “would do everything possible in order to apprehend the despicable murderer and the state of Israel will carry out justice against him.”
The attack took place near Havat Gilad, an unauthorized Israeli settlement outpost near Nablus. The isolated community of a few hundred Israelis is located deep inside the West Bank.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the unauthorized outpost to be retroactively recognized in response to the attack.
The Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas praised the shooting as “heroic” but did not take credit for the attack.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman responded to Tuesday’s attack on Twitter, writing that Shevah was “killed last night in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists.”
“Hamas praises the killers and PA (Palestinian Authority in the West bank) laws will provide them financial rewards. Look no further to why there is no peace,” Friedman said.
Israel has long unsuccessfully pushed for the Palestinians to halt the “martyrs’ fund” — payments to roughly 35,000 families of Palestinians killed and wounded in the conflict with Israel, including suicide bombers and other militants, arguing that the practice encourages violence.
The U.N. Mideast peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov also condemned the killing in a tweet that said: “There is no justification for terror and those who condone it, praise it or glorify it. This is not the path to peace!”
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.
Some 400,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which is home to 2.2 million Palestinians. The Palestinians claim the territory as part of their future state.
Around 200,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, which was also captured in the war and later annexed and which Palestinians seek as their capital.
VIN – why do you print this Reuters version of the story filled with subliminal rhetoric?? Cant we write our own articles? The whole end of the article repeats all the justifications for the Arab’s “Justified Terrorism”.
Stop all workers from ‘palestinian’ areas to Israel.
ALL OF THEM