Israeli forces kill Jewish settler, mistaken for a Palestinian

Israeli forces have mistaken a Jewish settler for a Palestinian and fatally shot him in the Old City of al-Quds (Jerusalem).

According to reports, the incident happened in the city’s Romema neighborhood late on Wednesday when two Israeli soldiers, boarding a bus on Yirmiyahu Street near the central bus station, were asked for their IDs by an unknown man.

When the soldiers asked the man to identify himself, he refused and tried to attack them, a move which reportedly made the soldiers open fire on him.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Further search revealed that he was an Israeli Jew himself.

However, according to Ma’an News Agency, the soldiers had orders to arrest a Palestinian suspect in the bus but they mistook another Israeli for the Palestinian and gunned him down.

Earlier in the day, another Palestinian, identified as Mohammad Fahim, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of Beit Ummar, a town near al-Khalil (Hebron).

Also on Wednesday, Israeli forces shot dead a young Palestinian man after he allegedly stabbed a female Israeli officer in the neck, near an Israeli settlement south of the city of Ramallah.

There are some other reports about an elderly Palestinian man who died after inhaling teargas fired by Israeli forces in al-Khalil (Hebron).

The killings were the latest in a series of Israeli shooting of Palestinians as part of the Tel Aviv regime’s month-long crackdown on residents of the West Bank, East al-Quds, and the blockaded Gaza Strip. Israel has tried to justify the killings by branding the slain Palestinians as “stabbers.”

The Palestinian Health Ministry has updated its fatality figure of the Israeli attacks, saying 54 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds injured since the Tel Aviv regime began a harsh crackdown in early October on the Palestinians enraged by the settler violence and a plan by the Tel Aviv regime to change the status quo of the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon told the Security Council that he was “not optimistic” about the ongoing crisis between Israelis and Palestinians, following talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in al-Quds.

The UN chief, who was addressing an emergency session of the UN Security Council on the crisis through a video-conference from Amman, warned both sides to pull back from a “dangerous escalation” that could lead to a full-scale Palestinian uprising.

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