The ministry stated that the two children, Muhammad Abdullah Taym (16 years old) and Muhammad Rashad Fadl Qasim (16 years old), were killed by occupation bullets in the town of Al-Judeira, northwest of Jerusalem, after Israeli forces fired a barrage of live bullets at them and seized their bodies.
The Israeli army claimed in a statement that it spotted two individuals throwing Molotov cocktails at a main road in the town, and that a special unit "neutralized" them without any injuries to its forces. In contrast, the Jerusalem Governorate stated that Israeli forces fired heavily on the two youths near the separation wall, in a densely populated residential area.
Jerusalem is surrounded by a concrete wall more than 8 meters high and about 202 kilometers long, most of which was built on land in the West Bank. The United Nations confirms that it aims to annex Palestinian land, while the International Court of Justice considers it illegal in a 2004 advisory opinion.
Demolition of homes
In a related context, Mu’taz Bisharat, the official in charge of the settlement file in the Tubas Governorate, reported that settlers demolished homes and livestock pens in Khirbet Humsa in the northern Jordan Valley belonging to citizen Yasser Mahmoud Abu Kabash and his son, using Israeli bulldozers.
He pointed out that the occupation forces demolished those homes before they were rebuilt, about two years ago, without mentioning their number, and indicated that the demolition comes within plans aimed at emptying the Jordan Valley of its Palestinian inhabitants.
Basharat condemned the escalating settler attacks, saying they are part of an effort to empty the Jordan Valley of Palestinians and seize control of the largest possible area of land.
These attacks are part of a broad Israeli escalation in the West Bank by the army and settlers that began in conjunction with the start of the Israeli war of extermination in Gaza on October 8, 2023.
Plans to reduce the number of occupation soldiers have been reversed.
On the other hand, the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot revealed on Friday that the Israeli Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, decided to freeze a plan to reduce the number of soldiers deployed in the West Bank after warnings from the General Security Service (Shin Bet), which said it had thwarted more than 1,200 attacks since the beginning of the year.
The newspaper explained that the decision came after a meeting of the "Cabinet" (ministerial cabinet), in which Settlement Minister Orit Strock objected to the reduction plan, considering that it "endangers the settlers."
There are no official Israeli estimates of the number of soldiers deployed in the West Bank, but the occupation army has strengthened its military presence in the West Bank since the start of the war of extermination in Gaza in 2023, and deployed thousands of soldiers and reservists around the settlements, while attacks by armed settlers against Palestinians have increased almost daily under the protection of the army.
According to the Hebrew newspaper, the army strengthened its military presence in the West Bank settlements after October 7, 2023, by deploying thousands of reserve soldiers to prevent attacks or infiltration attempts, but it is currently looking to gradually reduce its forces and transfer some protection tasks to the "local emergency teams" formed by the settlers with funding and equipment from the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
The newspaper explained that the military leadership acknowledges the army's inability to maintain current deployment levels for an extended period, noting that the long-term plan calls for settlers to assume local security duties in the West Bank, where more than half a million settlers live, according to estimates by the Peace Now movement.
She added that the army had already begun a gradual demobilization of reserve forces on various fronts, as part of the shift from combat operations to "intensive security routine" on the borders.
According to the newspaper, about two and a half reserve brigades will be withdrawn from defensive duties without specifying their locations, and will be replaced by two other regular reserve brigades on the northern border, while battalions from the "Givati" and "Kfir" brigades will replace the reserve forces in the West Bank.
The newspaper also reported that the army redeployed hundreds of regular soldiers from elite units that fought in Gaza to the West Bank, with a wider reduction planned for next December to give tens of thousands of soldiers a "necessary break" after months of military operations.
According to Palestinian statistics, Israeli attacks in the West Bank since October 2023 have resulted in the martyrdom of more than 1,060 Palestinians and the injury of about 10,000 others, in addition to the arrest of more than 20,000 people, including 1,600 children, while the Israelwar in Gaza left more than 68,000 martyrs and 170,000 wounded during two years of military operations.
