Palestine calls on int’l bodies to end extra-judicial killings by Israeli regime

The ministry statement came on Thursday, after the Israeli military shot and killed Ghufran Haroun Hamed Warasneh, a journalist and former prisoner in an Israeli jail.

The 31-year-old woman was killed on Wednesday over an alleged stabbing attempt against an Israeli soldier close to al-Arroub refugee camp, in the southern part of the West Bank.

The Israeli military alleged in a statement that the woman approached an Israeli soldier with a knife in her hand and tried to stab the trooper, making the Israeli troops at the scene to open fire.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the Israeli forces prevented its medical staff from attending to Warasnah for 20 minutes after shooting her. She was transferred to the hospital but died shortly afterward.

The ministry statement said that in the face of “this horrible crime, which will be added to the criminal record of the occupation, we demand that the international community immediately interfere to stop the extra-judicial killings that target Palestinians on streets and at checkpoints.”

The statement further called on International Criminal Court (ICC) “to investigate these repeated crimes, since they amount to war crimes.”

Similarly, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh condemned Israel’s killing of a Palestinian youth in Jenin’s town of Yabad during an army raid and held Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett responsible for the killings.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces raided a Palestinian town near the city of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, killing 24-year-old Balal Kabha and injuring six others.

The Palestinian PM said that the killing of Bilal Kabaha comes as “part of the systematic killing operation” carried out by the Israeli soldiers, “under the authorization of Bennett”, Palestine's official Wafa news agency reported.

Shtayyeh added that Bennett “offers the blood of the Palestinian people as a bribe to the Israeli extremists to preserve the fragile cohesion of his collapsing government.”

He criticized the Israeli regime’s back-to-back crimes with total disregard for “international laws and norms.”

“As soon as the murderers commit a crime, they commit another without the slightest regard to international laws and norms,” said Shtayyeh.

He also urged the international community to take action and to “end the double standards, enforce sanctions on Israel, and not allow perpetrators to escape punishment.”

The number of Palestinians, who have died since the beginning of the year during confrontations with Israeli forces in and around Jenin, reached 22.

The cold-blooded murder of veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akle earlier in May was also among the most appalling crimes committed by the Israeli regime over the recent months.

ICC has already opened an investigation into possible war crimes by Israel in both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, Israel does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and has called the probe “unfair” and “anti-Semitic.”