BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The entire city of Hebron was placed under a general closure on Friday while transfers of tax collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians were also cut, following a series of deadly incidents that left three Palestinians and two Israelis killed in two days.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that all crossing and passage out of the southern occupied West Bank city and its surrounding villages would be closed indefinitely, with the exception of military and humanitarian cases.She added that the closures were being implemented to “help foil and prevent future terrorist attacks.” It is said to be the greatest closure placed inside the occupied West Bank since 2014 when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and then killed.Israeli army spokesperson Peter Lerner was quoted by media as confirming the closure would only affect the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Hebron, the West Bank’s most populous city, and not Israelis residing in the illegal settlements in the area.
The closure came amid a massive manhunt for the suspect responsible for a shooting attack earlier Friday that left an Israeli man dead, his wife critically injured, and his two children lightly-to-moderately injured while driving in their car near the Otniel settlement south of Hebron where the family was from. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office on Friday also ordered that the money being transferred by the Palestinian Authority to “terrorists and their families” would be deducted immediately from monthly tax revenues, referring to money paid by the PA to former Palestinian prisoners and families of prisoners in Israeli custody.
“Israel believes that the authority’s support of terror, both in terms of incitement and in payments to terrorists and their families, are an inducement to terror,” a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement.
The general closure of Hebron came as an upgrade to the closure of the village of Beni Naim on Thursday, following a stab attack that was carried out by a village resident in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Hebron area, that left a 13-year-old Israeli girl killed in her bedroom.
The attacker was also shot dead.Initial reports from Israeli media alleged that the attacker in Friday’s shooting incident, who was still at large at time of writing, was also from Beni Naim. However an Israeli army spokesperson denied the reports.Meanwhile, in Hebron’s Old City at a checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque, a Palestinian woman confirmed to be from Beni Naim was shot dead by Israeli forces for allegedly attempting to commit a stab attack against Israeli soldiers stationed there. Shortly after, a Palestinian girl was detained at the same checkpoint for allegedly having a knife on her person.