As Israel carried out strikes far beyond its borders, violence surged in the occupied West Bank

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TULKAREM, West Bank (AP) — As Israeli strikes in far-off Qatar and Yemen sparked regional tensions this week, violence surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

A shooting attack at a Jerusalem bus stop killed six Israelis, and another two were stabbed and wounded in a separate incident. Israeli forces in the West Bank shot three 14-year-old Palestinians, killing two of them, and detained hundreds in a separate raid after an explosive device struck an armored vehicle, lightly wounding two soldiers.

They were the latest violent ripples from the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip — where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed — and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began decades earlier.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three for a future state. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again vowed that would never happen as he formalized a major new settlement project that critics say would split the West Bank in half.

On Monday, the same day as the Jerusalem attack — later claimed by Hamas — Israeli troops shot and killed two 14-year-old boys in the West Bank city of Jenin. The army carried out a major raid there earlier this year that destroyed scores of homes and displaced tens of thousands.

Relatives of Islam Majarmeh said he was killed as the family returned to their home to try to retrieve their belongings. His father, Abdul Aziz, said they went back after hearing the army had left, only to find their home completely destroyed. As they were leaving, troops opened fire, he said.

"He was standing right next to me, and suddenly he collapsed, face-first on the ground,” said Majarmeh. “A soldier came and told me to leave. I said, ‘How can I leave? I won’t go. This is a child.'”

The military said in a statement that several individuals it described as suspects had entered an off-limits area of Jenin and approached soldiers threateningly. It said troops opened fire after they ignored orders to leave, and that it was reviewing the incident.

Another 14-year-old, Mohammed Masqala, was killed by Israeli fire that day, according to the Palestinian Authority's Health Ministry. The circumstances of that shooting were not immediately clear.

On Wednesday, another 14-year-old, Oday Turkman, was shot and wounded while riding his bike, his father, Faisal, said as he stood by his bedside. The teenager is now in stable condition.

The military said troops opened fire because individuals were throwing stones at them, but Turkman said his son had done nothing wrong.

″He wasn’t carrying a stone or anything else, and he posed no threat,” the father said.

At least 18 Palestinian children under the age of 15 have been shot and killed by Israeli gunfire in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to data from the United Nations.

On Thursday, Israeli forces encircled the West Bank town of Tulkarem and detained hundreds of people after a bomb blast wounded two soldiers. Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group claimed the attack.

A video of the raid, shared on social media and obtained by The Associated Press, showed dozens of men in a line, each with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front of him. The army did not respond to request for comment.

Troops brought roughly a thousand people to an open field area near a military checkpoint and held them overnight before releasing most of them, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a group that advocates for prisoners and detainees, and two men who were detained and spoke to the AP after their release.

Pharmacist Yazeed Al-Sarghali said troops entered his shop Thursday afternoon, detaining him, his son and the customers inside.

“They made us stand in a line, like a train. There were seven of us, and they marched us for about 100 meters (yards),” he said. “As we were walking, they would stop anyone they suspected, including people living in the houses on both sides of the street.”

Al-Sarghali said the troops did not interrogate anyone and released most of the men around 1 a.m. Friday.

Mohammed Baddo, 19, said he was sitting at a cafe with a friend when the soldiers detained them.

“They didn’t take our ID cards, our phones, or anything at all — they just kept us sitting there," he said.

On Friday, a Palestinian working in a hotel near Jerusalem stabbed and wounded two guests, in what police said was a militant attack.

Israel says its near-daily military raids across the West Bank are aimed at rooting out Hamas and other militant groups that attack Israeli civilians. The raids have grown far more intense and wide-ranging since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the war nearly two years ago.

To Palestinians, the raids cement Israel's control over a territory where 500,000 settlers have full Israeli citizenship and 3 million Palestinians live under military rule. The Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy in towns and cities.

On Thursday, Netanyahu attended a signing ceremony for a major settlement project in an area known as E1, just outside of Jerusalem. Palestinians and rights groups say it will cut the West Bank in half and further sever it from east Jerusalem, making it virtually impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.

The creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is seen internationally as the only realistic way to resolve the conflict and end the kind of bloodshed seen this week.

Israel’s current government and most of its political class are opposed to Palestinian statehood. Hamas leaders have at times suggested they might accept a state along the 1967 lines, but the group remains formally committed to Israel’s destruction.

“We said that there will not be a Palestinian state – and indeed there will be no Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony in Maale Adumim, a sprawling settlement just outside of Jerusalem. “This place is ours.”

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Frankel reported from Jerusalem.

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