Palestinian Teen Dies of Injuries Sustained Last Week in West Bank Clash
A Palestinian teenager died on Wednesday of a gunshot wound sustained a week ago during a confrontation with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, hospital officials said.
The officials at Ramallah Hospital said Ali Safi, 17, had been shot through the chest. Witnesses said soldiers had responded to stone-throwing at a protest against a barrier going up between a Jewish settlement and a refugee camp near Ramallah.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
The incident came amid rising tensions in the West Bank after Israel froze the transfer of funds to the Palestinians in a diplomatic dispute and also following this month’s re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s withholding of tax revenues it collects for the Palestinians has crippled the Palestinian economy since January.
The Israeli military has said the move is fueling violence in the West Bank and this month held a surprise training drill for its forces in the area.
Israel said it halted the funds in protest over the Palestinian Authority joining the International Criminal Court. When its membership takes effect on April 1, it can file war crimes charges against Israel.
The Palestinians are also smarting from the re-election of Netanyahu, a right-wing leader who campaigned on a row back of an earlier commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
U.S.-brokered peace talks between the sides broke down last April. Since then Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stepped up unilateral moves at the United Nations to achieve the goal of Palestinian statehood.
The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in a 1967 war.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
