Soldiers shot a Palestinian rioter who they said had thrown a Molotov cocktail
Thursday night at officers manning the Hasam Hashoter checkpoint in
Hebron.
The incident occurred at the end of a long day, in which Border
Police and rioters clashed on the Palestinian side of that checkpoint starting
at 9 a.m. Soldiers from the Nahal Brigade were also involved in the
incidents.
Palestinians reported that Nasser Sharabati, 17, was
critically wounded in the chest by live ammunition and taken to the
hospital.
“He was seriously injured, and evacuated to a hospital by the
Palestinian Red Crescent,” an IDF spokesman said.
Tensions were high in the Palestinian section of Hebron following a Wednesday
evening incident in which a border policewoman killed 17- year-old Muhammad al-
Salaymeh at a checkpoint near the Cave of the Patriarchs.
She said she
had shot Salaymeh after she observed him threatening another officer with a gun,
which upon investigation turned out to be a fake pistol made of
metal.
Salaymeh had celebrated his birthday in school that morning,
according to Palestinians. One day later, on Thursday, anguished mourners
carried his body through the streets of Hebron.
Angered by the death of
teenager, who they believe was innocent of any wrongdoing, Palestinians rioted
in Hebron throughout the day, mostly near the Hasam Hashoter
checkpoint.
The street in front of the checkpoint was littered with
stones that rioters had thrown. They also burned tires.
The Palestinian
police failed to disperse the rioters, and IDF soldiers continuously fired tear
gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets.
Shopkeepers along the street hid
in their stores behind closed doors.
At times, the tear gas was so thick
that pedestrians blocks away from the violence had to cover their faces with
cloths.
Palestinian Authority security sources said that more than 25
Palestinians had been harmed in the violence. Abir Kopty of the Popular Struggle
Coordination Committee said the number of wounded was as high as
90.
Border Police tried to downplay the significance of the clashes,
which lasted for an unusually long time, even though their personnel have been
on high alert since Wednesday night.
Border Police and the Judea and
Samaria Police subdistrict said that the day’s disturbances were not out of the
ordinary for recent protests.
Judea and Samaria Police spokesman Dudi
Ashraf said the probe into Salaymeh’s death was still in its initial
stages.
When asked if the large number of surveillance cameras that
Israeli security forces had posted in the area would yield evidence, he said,
“That’s what they’re there for,” and added that time would tell whether “the
footage bears fruit.”
Violence also broke out in two places in
Samaria.
On Thursday evening, a Palestinian vehicle drove by a bus stop
outside the Halamish settlement and made a U-turn, whereupon a window opened in
the vehicle and someone inside shot at an Israeli woman who was sitting at the
stop. She was not hurt.
Separately, an Israeli man was lightly wounded
when a stone was thrown at his vehicle near the Ma’aleh Shomron settlement.
Security forces assume the stone-thrower was Palestinian.
All three
incidents occurred as Palestinians in the West Bank were beginning to celebrate
Hamas’s 25th anniversary, and in the wake of the IDF’s operation in Gaza and the
Palestinians’ successful UN bid to upgrade their status.
Security sources
said that these developments have probably contributed to an increase in the
number of disturbances in the West Bank.
That increase does not, however,
constitute the beginning of a third intifada, they said.
Cooperation
between the IDF and PA security forces remains in place, and has not decreased
in recent weeks.