Fresh wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians
December 15, 2018
The West Bank has experienced some of the worst violence in years this week. The upheaval is putting pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which relies on right-wing and pro-settler parties.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Ashtiyeh
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A fresh bout of violence between Israelis and Palestinians erupted on Friday in the occupied West Bank, as Israeli forces clamped down following a spate of tit-for-tat attacks that local media speculated could be the start of a new "intifada," or uprising.
The violence came as Israeli security forces intensified a search for a gunman who got out of his car on Thursday and opened fire at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement in the central West Bank, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding another soldier and civilian. No group has claimed credit for Thursday's attack, but Israel blamed Hamas.
Following the attack, the army set up roadblocks and entered Ramallah, the administrative and commercial center of the Palestinian administration, while raids were conducted across the West Bank leading to 40 arrests, among them 37 suspected Hamas activists, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said.
A Palestinian hurls stones at Israeli forces in the West BankImage: picture-alliance/AP/F. Mohammed
On the second day of clashes between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces across the West Bank and Ramallah, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 17-year-old was shot dead by Israeli fire. Dozens of Palestinians were injured.
In another incident, an Israeli soldier was wounded by a Palestinian assailant, who attacked him with a rock and knife at a military post near the Beit El settlement, the IDF said. Over the past two days, Israeli forces also killed two Palestinians that Israel said had tried to carry out attacks.
Promised land, enemy land: Israel 70 years after independence
Triumph or catastrophe? The state of Israel was declared 70 years ago this week, according to the Hebrew calendar — a turning point for Jews after the Holocaust. DW looks back at events that have shaped Israeli history.
Image: Imago/W. Rothermel
Long-held hope is victorious
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, future first prime minister of Israel, declares the state's independence, outlining the Jewish story: "The people kept faith with (the land) throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." It was the birth of an internationally recognized Jewish homeland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The darkest hour
While the controversial idea of a God-given land for Jews has biblical roots, the Holocaust was a close, powerful backdrop for the significance of Israel's founding. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews across Europe, and those who survived the concentration camps endured expulsion and forced labor. The above photo shows survivors of the Auschwitz camp following liberation.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/akg-images
'Nakba': Arabic for 'catastrophe'
Directly after Israel's founding, it was attacked by troops from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq - among others. Israel pushed back and expanded its control over 77% of Palestinian territory. Some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. "Nakba" is what Palestinians call this event. The war encapsulated the still unresolved Mideast conflict sparked in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration.
Image: picture-alliance/CPA Media
Life on a kibbutz
These land collectives, known as kibbutzim in the plural, were established across Israel following independence. Many were run by secular or socialist Jews in an effort to realize their vision of society.
Image: G. Pickow/Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A state at war
Tensions with its Arab neighbors erupted in the Six-Day War in June 1967. With a surprise attack, Israel is able to swiftly defeat Egypt, Jordan and Syria, bringing the Arab-populated areas of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights under Israeli control. Victory leads to occupation — and more tension and conflict.
Image: Keystone/ZUMA/IMAGO
Settlements on disputed territory
Israel's settlement policy worsens the conflict with Palestinians. Due to development and expansion of Jewish areas on occupied Palestinian land, the Palestinian Authority accuses Israel of making a future Palestinian state untenable. Israel has largely ignored the international community's criticism of its settlement policy, arguing new construction is either legal or necessary for security.
Image: picture-alliance/newscom/D. Hill
Anger, hate and stones: The first intifada
In winter 1987, Palestinians begin mass protests of Israel's ongoing occupation. Unrest spreads from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The uprising eventually wound down and led to the 1993 Oslo Accords — the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the representative body of the Palestinian people.
Image: picture-alliance/AFP/E. Baitel
Peace at last?
With former US President Bill Clinton as a mediator, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat hold peace talks. The result, the Oslo I Accord, is each side's recognition of the other. The agreement leads many to hope that an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict is not far off, but peace initiatives suffer a major setback when Rabin is assassinated two years later.
Image: picture-alliance/CPA Media
A void to fill
A right-wing Jewish fanatic shoots and kills Rabin on November 4, 1995, while he is leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin's assassination throws the spotlight on Israel's internal social strife. The divide is growing between centrist and extremist, secular and religious. The photo shows Israel's then-acting prime minister, Shimon Peres, next to the empty chair of his murdered colleague.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/J. Delay
Addressing the unspeakable
Nazi Germany's mass murder of Jews weighs on German-Israeli relations to this day. In February 2000, Germany's then-President Johannes Rau addresses the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in German. It is a tremendous emotional challenge for both sides, especially for Holocaust survivors and their descendants, but also a step towards closer relations after unforgettable crimes.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The Israeli wall
In 2002, amid the violence and terror of the Second Intifada, Israel starts building a 107-kilometer-long (67-mile-long) barrier of barbed wire, concrete wall and guard towers between itself and Palestinian areas of the West Bank. It suppresses the violence but does not solve the larger political conflict. The wall grows in length over the years and is projected to reach around 700 kilometers.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/dpaweb/S. Nackstrand
A gesture to the dead
Germany's current foreign minister, Heiko Maas, steps decisively into an ever closer German-Israeli relationship. His first trip abroad as the country's top diplomat is to Israel in March 2018. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, he lays a wreath in memory of Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Yefimovich
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Elsewhere on Friday, Jewish settlers threw stones at Palestinian vehicles, while an Arab bus driver was beaten by ultra-Orthodox Jews in a West Bank settlement.
The upheaval on Friday coincided with the 31st anniversary of the foundation of the militant Hamas movement, which since 2007 has controlled the Gaza Strip but maintains cells in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has limited self-rule.
Abbas has blamed both Hamas and Israel for the latest round of violence.
Separately, some 10,000 Palestinians on Friday demonstrated along the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel in a continuation of the weekly "March of Return" protests. At least 16 Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces, who said they were responding to protesters hurling rocks, Molotov cocktails and hand grenades.
Saeb Erekat on Conflict Zone
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Since March, more than 175 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier have been killed during the Gaza protests, which demand the Palestinian right to return to their former lands in what is now Israel as well as the end to a crushing Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the enclave.
Earlier in the week on Sunday, another Palestinian gunman wounded seven people in a drive-by shooting near a West Bank settlement. Among the injured was a pregnant woman, whose baby later died after being delivered prematurely. Hamas claimed credit for the attack.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces shot dead the Palestinian suspect behind the attack. Another Palestinian accused of killing two Israelis in October was also killed by Israeli security forces early on Thursday.
Netanyahu's Likud-led government is hanging by a thread with only a one-seat majority in the Knesset ahead of general elections scheduled for next year. He relies on the support of right-wing and pro-settler parties, who have threatened to take down the government if he does not take a hard line against Hamas, with which Israel has fought three wars since 2008.
Netanyahu's government has responded to the violence by reinforcing troops in the West Bank and announcing new measures to support settlements, which are widely viewed as an impediment to peace with the Palestinians.
There are more than 400,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements considered illegal by most of the international community.
In another move, the Israeli army on Saturday demolished the house of a Palestinian charged with killing an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. The operation, in Ramallah, involved dozens of soldiers and military vehicles and triggered clashes with angry residents.
It's part of a wider move to target the homes of any Palestinian attacker's family within 48 hours, a practice rights groups have criticized as collective punishment.
Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinians claim the West Bank and East Jerusalem as part of a future state. Peace talks have long stalled, exacerbating Palestinian frustration.
