50 Palestinians shot as Israeli teen killed in explosion

Tamara Nassar Rights and Accountability 23 August 2019

Parked jeep and soldiers stand in the middle of the road

Israeli occupation forces close a road in the area of the explosion which killed an Israeli teen on 23 August, near the Dolev settlement in the occupied West Bank. 

Hamza Shalash WAFA / APA images

An Israeli teen was killed and her father and brother were injured in an explosion near the Jewish settlement of Dolev northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday.

The same day, Israeli occupation forces injured more than 100 Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, 50 of them with live bullets.

The teen was identified as 17-year-old Rina Shnerb, who was declared dead at the scene, according to Israeli daily Haaretz.

Her death brings to nine the number of Israelis killed in conflict-related violence since the start of the year.

In the same period, Israeli occupation forces and armed settlers have killed almost 90 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shnerb’s father, 46, and her brother, 21, were both transferred to the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem for emergency treatment. The father’s condition is stable while the brother is on life support.

The Israeli army claimed an “improvised explosive device” was either hurled at the family or was already present in the area where the family was hiking, but ruled out the possibility that it was thrown from a moving vehicle.

Israeli occupation forces set up checkpoints, blockading the area and deploying Israeli soldiers to search for suspects.

Israel typically imposes harsh collective punishment measures on Palestinians following such incidents.

Pressure for revenge will likely be even greater than usual as Israel is in the midst of an election campaign.

Lawmakers to the right even of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded immediate annexation of the entire occupied West Bank.

Avigdor Lieberman, the former defense minister and a rival of the Israeli prime minister, claimed the attack was a result of Netanyahu’s “policies of surrender.”

The identity of the suspect remains unknown, but Israeli and American officials and propagandists immediately began blaming Palestinians:

Pro-Israel lobbyist Arsen Ostrovsky used the death of Shnerb to single out US congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, demanding a condemnation:
Dov Lipman, former member of the Israeli parliament, also used the teen’s death to attack progressive Jewish group IfNotNow, co-director of antiwar group CODEPINK, Ariel Gold, and congresswomen Tlaib, Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt called on the Palestinian Authority to condemn the attack.
Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli prime minister, used the occasion to attack the European Union for funding the Palestinian Authority, which he claims pays money to “terrorists.”
The younger Netanyahu seemed oblivious to the fact that just a day earlier his father’s government had agreed to transfer $560 million in withheld tax funds to the PA.

Despite the anti-PA rhetoric from Israeli leaders and propagandists, Israel remains dependent on “security coordination” with the Mahmoud Abbas-led Palestinian Authority to help maintain the occupation.

As The Times of Israel noted following one Israeli minister’s call Friday to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, “the PA has been working in coordination with the [Israeli army] to try to thwart terror attacks.”

Member of religious Zionist group

The teen killed was a religious instructor at Bnei Akiva, a religious Zionist youth movement.

Rabbi Noam Perel, the secretary-general of the group, once called for turning the Israeli military into an army of avengers “which will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins.”

Palestinian resistance organization Hamas lauded what it perceived as an act of “resistance.”

“The crimes of the occupation and its arrogance against our people, our land and our holy places will not pass without retaliation,” the group stated.

It did not, however, take credit for the attack.

Paramedics injured in Gaza

Meanwhile, Israeli snipers opened fire on Palestinian protesters and paramedics near the Israel-Gaza boundary fence on Friday.

More than 100 Palestinians were injured, some 50 of them by live fire.

They included three paramedics shot with rubber-coated steel bullets, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Friday marked the 71st week of the Great March of Return protests calling for an end to Israel’s siege and demanding that Palestinian refugees be allowed to exercise their right to return.

This comes less than a week after an unnamed senior Israeli government official revealed that Israel is actively encouraging and ready to facilitate mass emigration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

Two million Palestinians live in the tiny territory, two-thirds of them refugees from towns and villages in what is now Israel. Israel does not allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes because they are not Jews.

Since the beginning of the month, nine Palestinians Israel claims were armed have been killed in incidents along the Israel-Gaza boundary fence according to the UN monitoring group OCHA.

Palestinian resistance factions warned last week that Gaza was “a volcano that is about to erupt” and that “Israel is continuing to play with fire.”

Ali Abunimah contributed reporting.

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Comments

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Frank Dallas replied on

Martin Luther King was right about violence: if he wasn't morally opposed to it he would be tactically opposed. The Palestinians have no army, no air force, no navy, no command structure. They can't defeat Israel militarily. A roadside bomb which kills a child isn't going to bring democracy to Palestine and it fuels the Israeli narrative that they are the innocent victims of Arab terrorism. Remember what Chaim Weizmann said about democracy: that it isn't appropriate for Palestine because of the "qualitative" difference between Jews and Arabs. It's appallingly hard to be in the position of the Palestinians and to show restraint but violence plays into the Zionists' hands. The force which will bring change to Palestine is world opinion, dissent from the twisted Zionist account of Palestinian history, concerted effort to make Israel's stance unviable. Look at Brazil. The EU has stretched its sinews and the regime has had to bend. Why doesn't the EU do that for the Palestinians? Make no mistake, Macron (for all his many faults) was standing up to Trump. He was telling him the EU is a bigger trading block than the US and it will use its power to protect the world from climate change. That's what we must secure for the Palestinians. Meanwhile, don't plant bombs, throw copies of Ilan Pappe's books. That's a serious suggestion. The Zionists fear ideas much more than they fear IEDs. Violence is always the resort of those who have run out of ideas. We have the ideas. We have the evidence. We have the arguments. They are the best weapons. Every Israeli soldier, indeed every Israeli, should be made aware of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the book which demolishes the Israeli's central claims. Ilan Pappe's key quotations should be on billboards, on t-shirts, on everyone's lips. Rina Shnerb will be buried and Israeli minds will close a little tighter. It is our ideas and values which will force them to open. Spread the word, not death.

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John m Costello replied on

I'm not sure that Trump coerced Bibi into banning the squad. I tend to see it as a decision resulting from a variety pressure sources, one of them those on his right.
But - Trump's audacious missteps may be affecting the decision making by reinforcing the far-rights logic in demanding that NOW is the time to annex and remove. Trump, even though his opposition is very weak, is so stupid that he may be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and there's no telling when or even IF there will be another opportunity to establish a Greater Israel.
When again will so many major nationalist leaders - Putin, Modi and even Xi (who is not a pure nationalist but has been turned by events into a de facto one) - be so consumed by their own ambitions (or circumstances), that they might offer insufficient resistance to such aggression?
That leaves it entirely up to Europe and US and Lord knows, we all have our own nascent fascism. There is no military option or even will. A good reason to crush BDS and with it a viable rallying cry for global grass roots resistance.
Genocide might be premature to undertake now but it doesn't appear to be irrational to speculate on it.
Was it a good move to ban the squad? Probably not but it's precarious positioning to rely on bad decision making to avert bad outcomes.

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StevoR replied on

Is there any hope for peace now? Any hope a catastrophic, horrific war can be avoided?

What do you think will likely happen now please - best & worst case scenarios & what can ppl outside Palestine do - if anything - to save lives, stop war & see progress towards something positive occur?

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Sean Breathnach replied on

There is only one entity responsible for killing in Israel/Palestine and that is Israel, who for over half a century has ethnically cleansed Palestinians, continues to do so even to this day. Military rule, shoot to kill, administive arrest and detention, night-time raids on family homes, no end to physical abuse. All done with impunity and the support of the dishonest peace broker, America.

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Germana P Nijim replied on

Sean Breathnack said it perfectly. No one could have said it better.

Heats off to Sean!

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Geoff Ryan replied on

The killing of the young Israeli woman and the injuries to her father and brother were reported on several BBC news broadcasts I heard yesterday. Several minutes were given to the item. Not one of them mentioned the shooting of 50 Palestinians. In fact not one of them mentioned the shooting of any Palestinians. The pro-Israeli bias of the. BBC could not be clearer.

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William replied on

Israel has done the ethnic cleansing, bulldozing of Palestinian homes, internments, murders and
military attacks on civilians. True. But, the real rat in this picture is the U.S., my country, which has
allowed Israel's lawlessness. America the giant has been put to work as a serf for Israel, and my countrymen have no clue.

Tamara Nassar

Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada.