Ramallah: A Palestinian man was shot and killed by an Israeli elite ‘counter-terrorism’ unit on Thursday after a far-right rabbi was shot on Wednesday night by an unknown assailant.
Rabbi Yehuda Glick was shot in a drive-by shooting after attending a conference called ‘Israel Returns to the Temple Mount (Al Haram Al Sharif)’. The 50-year-old was hospitalised but survived the attack. Glick is a controversial figure who has been barred from the religious site by Israeli police and intelligence.
Sources in occupied east Jerusalem told Gulf News that a large Israeli force raided the Al Thawree neighbourhood of Silwan, just south of Al Haram Al Sharif, killing 32-year-old Muataz Ebrahim Khalil Hijazi.
Hijazi was shot by sniper fire while he was on his rooftop, according to sources. The Israeli force then attacked him while he lay motionless and threw a large piece of glass taken from solar panels onto the already injured man. Paramedics were refused access to Hijazi, who was left to bleed to death.
Hani Gaith, a political activist and head of the Al Thawri Club, supported much of this account. He told Gulf News that tens of Palestinians from around occupied East Jerusalem had tried to reach Hijazi to save his life and clashed with forces which surrounded the house. At least 15 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes — four of them critically.
Gaith said that the Israelis seized Hijazi’s body and have so far refused to hand the martyr’s body to his family for burial.
Hijazi was a former Palestinian prisoner who was arrested in 2002 on charges of being involved in the second intifada. He was sentenced by an Israeli military court to six years in jail, but the term was extended for four years after Hijazi and prison guards were involved in a fight. Hijazi was released on June 5, 2012.
The occupied East Jerusalem sources said that the Israeli forces acted without even confirming that Hijazi was responsible for the shooting of Glick and claimed that the killing was solely motivated by a desire to please the colonists.
Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) praised the assassination attempt on Glick saying it was a justified response to Israeli incitement, restrictions and expansion in occupied Jerusalem.
