Thousands of people on Thursday attended the funerals of four Palestinians who were shot dead during an Israeli operation in the West Bank town of Ramallah one day earlier.
The four bodies were taken from the hospital to the late Yasser Arafat’s tomb in the Palestinian leadership compound in the administrative capital of the West Bank.
Mourners appealed for national unity from Arafat’s successor, the Palestinian National Authority president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister of the new Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniya.
‘Abbas, Haniya, we want national unity,’ shouted the crowd shortly before crisis talks, attended by the two leaders, got underway in Gaza and the West Bank in a bid to ease a power struggle between their Fatah and Hamas factions.
The four Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops during an operation in Ramallah to capture a senior militant from the Islamic Jihad anti-occupation movement.
Around 60 other Palestinians were wounded during the raid.
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) opened sporadic gunfire at noon rush hour in the Manara Square downtown in West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, killing three Palestinian civilians and a bystander security man, and wounding 60 people more.
The victims were laid to rest on Thursday in their respective localities.
National and Islamic anti-Israeli occupation groups had announced Thursday a day of mourning and anger in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The victims were identified by the Palestinian official news agency, WAFA, as bystander security man Aysar al-Qasem from Aqaba village south of Jenin in the northern West Bank, student of Al-Quds Open University Ja’far Khaled Hussein, 26, from Beitillu village west of Ramallah, and Milad Abdullah Abu al-Arayes, 22, from Al-Ama’ari refugee camp south of Ramallah, Ghaleb Rabah, in their early twenties.
At least ten Palestinian citizens, including a woman, were arrested Thursday by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in different cities in the West Bank, witnesses and security sources said.
Security sources told WAFA that IOF stormed the town of Borqeen, west of Jenin, and arrested five citizens.
In the meantime, two citizens, Fathi Ramadhan 20 and Samer al-Lahham 27, were arrested as Israeli military moved into the holy city of Bethlehem, witnesses said.
They added that the father of Fathi Ramadan, was wounded as Israeli soldiers beat him up before arresting his son.
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) also stormed ‘Al-Bad Museum’ in Bethlehem and caused critical damages, official sources reported.
The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism (MoT) stated that the Israeli soldiers damaged the gate of the museum and stormed it.
It added that the soldiers smashed several antiquities and caused damages.
The tourism ministry said that such attack breaches the international law which prevents any attacks or damages against historical sites.
In the city of Nablus, six citizens, including a woman, were arrested Thursday morning and Wednesday overnight.
Security sources said that IOF arrested Thursday morning the wife of Fadi Qfaisheh.
The sources added that the Israelis arrested Mrs Qfaisheh as she is a wife of a ‘wanted’.
Two other citizens were arrested on Thursday in the town of Beta near Tulkarem and three others were arrested on Wednesday night at a checkpoint near Nablus.
Since the start of 2006, Israel has killed more than twice as many Palestinian civilians as Palestinians have killed Israelis – 39 Palestinians compared to 17 Israelis, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation.
Last week, the IOF killed three Palestinian women and a toddler.
‘Under international law you must take all feasible precautions to avoid or at least minimise civilian loss,’ said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch.
A Palestinian activist of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) named Mansour, who had gone to the scene, said he was injured by shrapnel when IOF soldiers opened fire at bystanders.
The shrapnel in his head required stitches, the ISM said.
Fifteen Israeli military vehicles on Wednesday rescued an IOF undercover unit that sneaked into the West Bank city of Ramallah in a car, detained senior anti-occupation activist Mohammad al-Shubaki and four others, before the unit was discovered and its car torched by Palestinians.
Al-Shubaki was identified as a member of the Palestinian anti-occupation group, Islamic Jihad, and said to be the commander of Jihad’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, in the Qalqilya area of the northern West Bank.
As the Israelis began pulling out of the Manara Square, they were pelted with rocks, and a crowd of people flooded into the streets, chasing the departing jeeps.
Boys on rooftops hurled rocks at the army vehicles below.
A day earlier, IOF troops detained top Hamas military commander, Ibrahim Hamed, 41, in the West Bank town of al-Beira, about 200 metres from President Mahmud Abbas’ residence.
Israel links Hamed to attacks that allegedly killed 78 people, including five dual Israeli-US nationals.
Hamed has been on Israel’s wanted list since 1998, according to AP.
Before dawn Tuesday, a dozen jeeps and two armoured personnel carriers surrounded his hideout, an apartment building.
Mohammed Azzam, 48, said he watched the arrest from his balcony facing the two-story building where Hamed was holed up.
He said an army bulldozer rammed the door to the hideout, which consisted of two apartments over shops on the ground floor.
Using a loudspeaker, troops then called out Hamed’s name in Arabic.
They told Hamed they would demolish the building with him inside if he didn’t surrender, Azzam said.
After Hamed was detained, IOF soldiers entered the building and blew out doors and windows, as a robot searched for explosives.
For some time, Hamed was held in a Palestinian jail for involvement in the Hamas military wing but was released in 2002 during a major Israeli military offensive which re-occupied most of the West Bank.
Hamed graduated from the West Bank’s Bir Zeit University in 1993, with degrees in history and political science, his nephew Ayman said.
Hamed grew up in the West Bank village of Silwad, and belongs to the same clan as Khaled Mashaal, the chairman of the Hamas politburo.
