The Israeli military killed two 15-year-old boys in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Thursday, according to the Palestinian Authority, as Jewish settlers in the territory continued their attacks on Palestinian communities.
The PA said the two boys, Bilal Bahaa Ali Baaran and Muhammad Mahmud Abu Ayash, were killed “by bullets from the occupation this afternoon, Thursday, near Beit Omar, north of Hebron.”
The Israeli military said that it killed two Palestinians, whom it claimed were on their way to “carry out a terror attack,” but offered no evidence to back up the claim or any other details about the slaying. Earlier this year, the IDF expanded its “open fire” policy in the West Bank, which led to an increase in the killing of civilians.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that three Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, were wounded by Israeli military gunfire in the town of Eizariya, southeast of Jerusalem.
Also on Thursday, Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque in the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya, near Salfit in the northern West Bank. Al Jazeera reported that the settlers sprayed racist, anti-Palestinian graffiti, and photos of the scene show burned Qurans.
There’s been a surge in settler attacks in the West Bank, coinciding with the start of the olive harvesting season, as Palestinian olive farmers are frequently targeted. The UN recorded a total of 266 settler attacks in October, the highest in a single month since it began recording in 2006, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“Since 2006, OCHA has documented over 9,600 such attacks. About 1,500 of them took place just this year, roughly 15% of the total,” OCHA said earlier this month.
The surge in violence in the West Bank came after a de-escalation in Gaza as a result of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, which Israel has repeatedly violated by launching attacks and killing more than 240 Palestinians since the truce went into effect, according to numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
