For months the White House has expressed concern over the spiraling violence in the West Bank, where Israel is being confronted by increasingly effective Palestinian militants, with whom its forces fought in lengthy street battles this week.
TEL AVIV — In a week that saw U.S.-made attack helicopters strafing a Palestinian city and Israeli settlers rampaging through a village filled with American citizens, the Biden administration finds itself caught up in a rapidly escalating conflict.Both sides are also introducing new and more powerful weapons and tactics that hark back to the all-out war of the second intifada more than 20 years ago, when Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank.
Later that night, Israel, in another rare move, announced it had used drones for the first time since 2006 to kill three members of a Palestinian “terrorist cell.” Settlers from the hard-line settlement of Yitzhar also cut electricity lines leading to the Palestinian village of Ourif, the hometown of the two Hamas gunmen.
“We continue to work directly with our Israeli partners, with the Palestinian Authority, to promote steps to advance de-escalation,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel in a news conference Wednesday when asked about the presence of U.S.-supplied weapons in recent battles that killed militants as well as civilians.
When asked in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster if he and his fellow politicians had pushed for the Wednesday night drone attack, Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of the far-right Jewish Power party, said, “We are pleased to see our demands are being met.” “We need more pressure from the U.S. government, which can tell Israel to stop building settlements, and it can stop sending weapons,” said Wasef Erekat, a Palestinian military analyst in Ramallah.He said the ongoing Israeli military raids, focusing on Jenin, had helped militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as smaller local battalions, to recruit in unprecedented numbers and encouraged them to develop new weapons and tactics, such as preparing homemade bombs and explosives.
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