Shooting
Incident
On 26 February 2023, four days after the incursion in Nablus, an unidentified attacker shot and killed two Israelis in a car near the Einbus intersection along Highway 60 in Huwara, south of Nablus. [1] [2] The attacker shot the two Israelis with an M16 rifle while they were driving [3] and then fled the scene on foot. [4]
Assailant
No group initially claimed responsibility for the shooting. [1] On March 7, an Israeli raid in Jenin killed the attacker, 49-year-old Abdel Fattah Hussein Kharousha, 3 militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and two other Palestinian militants. Kharousha's three sons were also arrested. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] After his death, Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack and identified Kharousha, a fighter in the Qassam Brigades, its military wing, as the perpetrator. [6] [10] [11] Large crowds accompanied Kharousha's coffin from the Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus to his burial in the Askar Camp, east of Nablus. [10]
Kharousha was born in 1974. After joining the Qassam Brigades, he was arrested multiple times by Israel, including alongside his son Muhammad in August 2019 for planning to shoot at a bus carrying Israeli soldiers in Huwara. He was released at the end of 2022 after serving 40 months in prison. [5]
Victims
The two Israelis killed in the shooting were brothers named Hillel Menachem Yaniv and Yagel Ya’acov Yaniv. They were from the Har Brakha settlement, [12] and were described as yeshiva students. [13] One of the brothers had just completed his service in the Israeli Navy. [14]
Following a lawsuit by the Yaniv family, Israel seized $5.2 million in funds for the Palestinian Authority (PA) under the 2024 Compensation for Terror Victims Law. Under the law, heirs of victims are entitled to compensation of $2.6 million per victim. The lawsuit targeted the PA's payments of stipends to militants and their families. [15]
Aftermath
Later on the same day, groups of Israeli settlers rioted in the region, carrying out revenge attacks. One Palestinian man was fatally shot in the abdomen in neighboring Za'tara. An analysis by journalists for +972 Magazine of 14 videos of the assault conducted by 40–50 settlers, who had returned to Za'tara after being repulsed the first time, concluded that the simultaneous attack on Za'atara in which Sameh Aqtesh was shot dead was conducted under Israeli army escort. [16] In Huwara itself, 98 Palestinians were injured as settlers torched Palestinian homes. [1] [14] [17]
By the evening of 26 February, Israeli and Palestinian officials released a joint statement emphasizing the "the importance of de-escalation on the ground and preventing further violence." Israel pledged not to approve new housing units in the West Bank for four months. The two parties agreed to examine the renewal of security cooperation and to establish a joint committee to explore economic measures Israel could take for the Palestinians. [14]
After the IDF killed Kharousha and others on 7 March, Palestinian factions called for an escalation of "armed resistance" and revenge. [6]
During a 3 April raid in Nablus, the IDF arrested Izz al-Din Touqan and Nidal Tabanja, who it accused of assisting the Huwara attacker. The IDF killed two Palestinian militants, Mohammad Nasser Al-Saeed (also rendered Mohammad Saeed Nasser) and Mohammad Abu Baker Al-Junaidi, during the operation after militants opened fire on the IDF. Palestinian militant group The Lions' Den identified Al-Saeed as one of its fighters. Al-Junaidi was a fighter and the Fatah secretary-general in Juneid. [18] [19] [20] [21]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
