A young Palestinian woman shot and wounded by Israeli troops after she reportedly attempted to stab a soldier at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank has died. The woman, named as a 19-year-old university student, was wounded at the checkpoint near the centre of Hebron around 8.30am on Tuesday.”The attacker attempted to stab a soldier,” an Israeli army spokeswoman said, explaining that the soldier then fired live ammunition at her “lower extremities”. It later emerged that she was shot several times, including in the chest.The soldier was not wounded.The army said the woman was transferred to a hospital in Israel after the incident. However, a video posted by the news agency PalMedia shows the woman being left to bleed on the ground after she was shot and then being roughly pulled out of the frame of a camera. Tensions have been rife for sometime now once again in the West Bank. In recent weeks the Al Aqsa compound has been the scene of vehement struggle and clashes between Muslims and Israeli settlers who have been encroaching upon this holiest of sites. The scene seems well-equipped for the beginning of another intifada or violent strikes by the Israelis who leave no stone unturned when it comes time for them to unleash their brutality. Every couple of years we see a new cycle of violence perpetuated on the abandoned Palestinians, a people so repressed that they live in an open-air prison. This act of killing a young, seemingly defenceless Palestinian woman reeks of incitement and an itch to bomb and maim more people in Gaza and the West Bank. The IDF is continuing with its long standing pattern of acting with viciousness and in cold blood by attacking (and killing) men, women and children alike, armed, unarmed, peaceful or militant. The track record of the IDF suggests that the repression and extreme kind of cruelty the Israelis are known for — in which thousands of Palestinians are killed in bomb strikes by Israel — is about to be unleashed yet again.Another Palestinian, a 21-year-old young man, was also reportedly killed by Israeli forces. It is a fact that any occupying force the world over will be met with resistance. The Palestinians offer the only kind of resistance they can with stones, homemade Molotov cocktails and their voices, but they face a ruthless foe. The whole world, including the Muslim community, has left the Palestinians to fend for themselves. They are embroiled in an unequal conflict and the atrocities perpetuated against them seem tragically destined to continue.
pk.shafaqna.com
