Two Palestinians, including a 57-year-old school teacher, were killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, according to Palestinian officials and media.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead as Jawad Bawaqna, 57, and Adham Jabarin, 28. They were shot in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, which has become a flashpoint for surging Israeli violence.
The ministry announced the "martyrdom of Jawad Farid Bawaqna, 57, killed by a bullet in the chest, and Adham Mohammed Bassem Jabareen 28, after he was shot in the upper abdomen by the Israeli occupation army during its aggression on Jenin."
The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said Bawaqna was a secondary school teacher and a father of six.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade – an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority – claimed Jabarin as a fighter.
The agency said Bawaqna was shot and killed as he was trying to offer Jabarin medical aid after he had been shot outside his home.
The Israeli military said it had no immediate comment.
Palestinian media also reported that the Israeli forces arrested a local official of the armed group Islamic Jihad in Jenin.
Tensions have soared in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been conducting near-nightly arrest raids since last spring after a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 people. Another 10 Israelis were killed in a second string of attacks later last year.
Israel claims the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks.
The Palestinians, however, see them as the further entrenchment of Israel’s open-ended, 55-year occupation of lands they seek for their future state.
17 and counting
Thursday’s deaths put at 17 the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank since the beginning of 2023.
A surge in violence in 2022 made it the deadliest year in the West Bank since United Nations records began in 2005.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, making it the deadliest year since 2004.
According to AFP figures, at least 26 Israelis and 200 Palestinians were killed across Israel and the Palestinian territories last year.
The Palestinian envoy in Ankara earlier Tuesday put the death toll for Palestinians at 230, making last year the deadliest in seven years.
The majority of the fatalities were in the West Bank, while 49 Palestinians were killed in a three-day conflict in Gaza.
Israel alleges most of the dead were militants. But Palestinian stone-throwers, youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations also have been killed.