Palestinian killed by Israeli army gunfire in West Bank

A Palestinian was killed and two Israeli soldiers were wounded early Wednesday during a raid carried out by an Israeli army force in the town of Silwad in the central West Bank, in an operation that the army said came after its forces were attacked.

The army said in a statement that "two people attacked the soldiers" during the raid, which led to the injury of two of its members, noting that it killed one of the attackers and arrested the other without revealing his health status, while the  Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that the young man Abdel Halim Ruhi Abdel Halim Hammad (37 years old) was killed by the army and his body was detained.

Eyewitnesses reported that a large force stormed the town at 1:30 a.m., and carried out raids and searches on Palestinian homes, interspersed with attacks on residents, before Israeli forces transferred a wounded man from inside the Hammad family's home.

Israel approves construction of 126 settlement units in the northern West Bank

In a parallel development, Israeli authorities on Wednesday approved the construction of 126 new settlement units in the settlement of "Sanur" in the northern West Bank, nearly 20 years after it was evacuated as part of the "disengagement" plan in 2005.

Israel's Channel 12 said the approval came after legislative amendments made by the current government, which allowed the lifting of restrictions on the settlement presence in the northern West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed the decision, calling it "a message that we are staying here," while Settlement Council Chairman Yossi Dagan described the move as a "correction of the crime of expulsion" and stressed that Sanur "will turn into a city in the future."

Israel's Peace Now movement noted that the pace of planning and approval in Sanur's case was "exceptional," and that the government officially celebrated the return to the settlement on April 19 in the presence of the ministers of defense, justice and finance.

Fears of de facto annexation of the West Bank mount

The move comes amid an uptick in settlement activity since the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu took office in late 2022, despite repeated Palestinian and international calls to halt settlement expansion, which the United Nations considers illegal.

Palestinian concerns are growing that escalating aggressions, including daily settlement attacks, demolitions and arrests, constitute practical steps toward de facto annexation of large parts of the West Bank.

Some 750,000 Israeli settlers reside in 141 settlements and 224 outposts in the West Bank, including about 250,000 in East Jerusalem, which the United Nations considers part of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Local officials and activists warn that the recent attacks, especially in Jaloud, Qusra, Turmusaya and al-Mughayir, represent an "unprecedented escalation" that could open the door to waves of forced displacement in the absence of any international intervention capable of stopping the attacks.

The Israeli army claims to have assassinated a Hamas military official in northern Gaza

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said on Wednesday (April 29) that it had assassinated a Hamas military official during an attack it carried out yesterday in the northern Gaza Strip, claiming that the target was Iyad Ahmed Abd al-Rahman al-Shanbari, whom it described as the "head of the operations department of the military intelligence service" in the movement.

 The army said that the operation was carried out in cooperation with the Shin Bet security service, and that al-Shanbari was involved in the planning of the October 7,  2023, attack, and was responsible for gathering intelligence about Israeli forces. The army did not provide independent evidence for these claims, nor did there be any comment from Hamas.

According    to the  Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israel has killed 818 Palestinians and wounded 2,301 others since the start of the latest violations, in the context of an ongoing war since October 2023 that has left more than 72,000 dead and 172,000 wounded, and extensive destruction of 90% of civilian infrastructure.