IOF Shoot Dead Four Palestinians in 24 Hours

IOF Shoot Dead Four Palestinians in Twenty-Four Hours

Palestinian Leadership Calls for Int’l Intervention to Save ‘Roadmap’

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) shot dead four Palestinians in the past twenty four hours, two of them in the West Bank and two others in the Gaza Strip, in a new Israeli escalation that threatens to put an end to the declared hudna, or temporary truce, announced by Palestinian factions more than a month ago.

IOF soldiers killed one Palestinian in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem Monday dawn, claiming he was planting an explosive device in a road used by Israeli occupation troops.

Palestinian sources in Tulkarem denied the Israeli accusations adding that the victim, 27-year-old Nihad Qasem, was assassinated by IOF troops.

The sources added that IOF troops were deployed in mass near Tulkarem southern entrance and that the town was put under strict closure.

Elsewhere in the occupied territory, IOF killed two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation army said.

No further information was available on the identity of the victims or the location where they were killed.

Earlier on Sunday, A Palestinian driver was shot dead by Israeli police at a checkpoint on the road from Ramallah to Jerusalem, Palestinian security and medical sources said.

A police statement said that Suleiman Abu Ghaya, 22, was killed by Israeli occupation forces who had stopped his car.

Palestinian security sources said that Ghaya, from al-Jeb near Jerusalem, had been shot in the head when he got out of his car at al-Ram checkpoint.

Witnesses said that his body had been taken by Palestinians at the scene of the shooting.

An Israeli police spokesman alleged that police opened fire when the driver tried to flee after his vehicle collided with a barrier.

“The man got out of his vehicle and then tried to run away. The police then opened fire and wounded him,” Gil Kleiman told AFP.

Meanwhile, four Israelis were wounded in a shooting at their car near an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Sunday, the Israeli occupation army said.

The shooting took place on a road connecting the settlement of “Har Gilo” to Jerusalem and was a rare action since Palestinian factions waging a 34-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation declared a three-month truce on June 29.

Residents said Palestinian police in vehicles began patrols in the nearby city of Bethlehem in search of the alleged attackers.

“Such incidents may occur. They should not be taken as a pretext to fallback on the hudna,” the Palestine National Authority (PNA) Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told al-Jazzera TV news network Sunday.

Palestinian factions have consequently warned that that the cease-fire would be threatened if Israel continues breaching and violating the hudna.

Mohamed Haniya, a top Hamas leader, said last week that since the announcement of Hudna by Palestinian factions on June 29, IOF killed ten Palestinians and detained over three hundred others, warning that Palestinian factions are discussing the status quo on the ground to determine whether to stay obliged to the truce, due to the continuous Israeli violations.

Separately, the Palestinian leadership warned Sunday that the policies of the Israeli government threaten the international “roadmap” plan with collapse, and would lead to grave consequences, a fact which requires an urgent and active intervention by the international community.

The practices on the ground by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon aims at obstructing the chances for implementing the US-sponsored “roadmap”, the leadership said.

The warning came following a meeting of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chaired by President Yasser Arafat and attended by Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas at the Palestinian leader’s battered headquarters in Ramallah.

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