Israel orders crackdown in West Bank after killing of rabbi

Israel has ordered a sweeping crackdown in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank after the shooting death of an Israeli rabbi.

Israeli sources said Raziel Shevah, 35, was killed by shots fired from a passing vehicle near the Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad in the northern West Bank on Tuesday.

Blaming the incident on “a suspected Palestinian attacker,” the regime ordered the military to set up roadblocks, cordon off Palestinian villages, and deploy reinforcements to the territory a day later.

Security forces have so far rounded up 11 Palestinians in attacks on residences across the West Bank and confiscated people’s personal belongings in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron) in the southern part of the territory.

Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman have been quick to issue strong-worded threats, as well.

Tel Aviv often uses such incidents as pretexts to intensify its already draconian restrictive measures against the Palestinians residing in the territory, which it occupied in 1967. Some 400,000 Israelis live in settlements the regime has been building on occupied territory ever since.

Israeli forces close a road on January 10, 2018 in the area where a 35-year-old Israeli rabbi was reportedly killed late the previous day in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (Photo by AFP)

Reaction by Hamas

Hessam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau has said the incident was a natural reaction to the occupying regime’s atrocities against the Palestinian nation and its holy sites. He called it a slap in the face of the Israeli regime and a response to US President Donald Trump’s move last month to recognize East Jerusalem al-Quds in the West Bank as Israel’s “capital.”

Badran said it was “our historical right” to consider al-Quds to be “Palestine’s eternal capital.”

He also called the person responsible for the incident a “hero.”

Abu Ubayda, the spokesman for Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, meanwhile, said the incident was a reminder for “the enemy leaders that ‘whatever you are afraid of will transpire in the future.’”