THE Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has condemned the latest escalation of violence by Israeli forces against Palestinians across the occupied territories, saying the Tel Aviv regime has killed five times more Palestinians during the first four months of 2022 compared to the same period last year.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement on Sunday that it has documented the killing of 47 Palestinians, including eight children and two women, by Israeli forces in various incidents since the beginning of the year, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.
This number represents nearly five times the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces in the same period last year, which amounted to 10, it added.
Euro-Med Monitor also noted that Israeli forces have significantly escalated the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and the occupied East al-Quds during the past several days, following a green light from Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
Meanwhile, Israeli residents of a central city have formed an armed vigilante group, the latest in stepped-up arming of extremists who target Palestinians with impunity.
The rights group noted that 18 Palestinians have been killed in the first half of the current month, adding that most of them died after Bennett granted full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet (domestic intelligence agency) and all security forces in order to defeat ‘the terror’ in the northern West Bank on 8th April.
The authorisation of the Israeli politicians for the army and security to operate with ‘full freedom to defeat terrorism’ seems to have paved the way for the unjustified excuse to kill and abuse Palestinian civilians at military checkpoints and in the cities, villages and towns of the West Bank and East al-Quds, the rights group said.
- The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates yesterday rejected the attempts of the Israeli Foreign Ministry to fabricate terrorist charges against it.
The Foreign Ministry condemned a ‘dismal attempt to distort the role of Palestinian diplomacy and obstruct its work in exposing the crimes of the occupation and mobilise the widest international condemnations of its open war against Jerusalem and its holy places, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque.’
It said that these accusations are ‘a clear extension of Israel’s continued aggression against our people and their leadership’.
Meanwhile, the number of Palestinians held in administrative detention in Israel without charge or trial has increased to 650, said the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission yesterday.
It said Israel has intensified its administrative detention orders in March and April, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, which was the reason behind this surge in numbers in a short period. The number before this stood at 450.
