The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of carrying out “extra-judicial executions,” and called on the United Nations to provide protection for the Palestinians.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), meanwhile, called on Palestinians to step up the “resistance” against Israel, in response to the killing of a gunman near Jenin and a woman who tried to stab police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem early Thursday.
In the village of Burkin, near Jenin, soldiers shot and killed 22-year-old Alaa Zyoud, a member of PIJ’s al-Quds Brigades.
Hours later, police officers shot and killed Israa Khuzaimia, a mother of three from Kabatiya, also near Jenin. The woman was shot while she tried to carry out a stabbing attack near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The PLO accused Israel of killing the two “in cold blood,” and called on the international community to assume its responsibilities toward “the enforcement of international and humanitarian laws in the occupied territories.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned “in the strongest terms the two heinous field executions committed by the occupation forces and its police in both Jerusalem and Burkin.”
According to the ministry, the killings are the direct result of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s evasion of the Palestinian issue during his speech at the UN General Assembly earlier this week.
The killings are also “an extension of a long series of criminal field execution orders issued by the political and military echelon in the occupying state to its soldiers to facilitate the process of shooting at the Palestinians,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry also condemned settler assaults on Palestinians in the Masafar Yatta area near Hebron, claiming they were carried out “under the supervision and protection” of the IDF.
“The ministry holds the Israeli government headed by Naftali Bennett fully and directly responsible for these crimes and their serious repercussions on the situation in the entire region,” the statement read, urging the UN to provide international protection for the Palestinians.
It also called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to establish an investigation committee “for Israeli crimes and violations.”
The Palestinian Prisoners Club revealed that the IDF arrested 54 Palestinians in the Jenin area since the beginning of September, most of them after the escape of the six security prisoners from Gilboa Prison earlier in the month.
The Prisoners Club accused Israel of imposing a policy of “collective punishment” against Palestinians in the Jenin area, including the families of the six escaped inmates. The six were recaptured by Israel Police.
PIJ mourned the death of its member, Alaa Zyoud, and pledged to pursue the fight against Israel. It said the increased violence in the West Bank was “an authentic expression of the will of the Palestinian people who do not accept surrender, and whose resolve is not frustrated by conspiracies.”
Responding to Thursday’s killings, Hamas said that “the armed resistance and the comprehensive confrontation with the occupation is capable of stopping its aggression and expelling its settlers from our occupied land.”