NABLUS/RAMALLAH, 19 September 2007 — An Israeli soldier and a teenage Palestinian were killed during a major Israeli invasion into a refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank yesterday, officials said. Mohammad Rida Khaled, 17, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was shot dead during exchanges of fire with troops in Ein Beit Elma refugee camp in the town of Nablus, medics and witnesses said.
An Israeli conscript was also killed during a shootout between troops and Palestinian gunmen in the same camp, an army spokesman said. Another soldier was lightly wounded. The PFLP and rival armed group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for killing the soldier when militants staged an attack using explosives, despite the Israelis saying the soldier was killed by gunfire.
Around 40 military vehicles including bulldozers were in the refugee camp, where the 5,000 residents have been placed under a curfew, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, three human rights organizations have blasted the Israeli government’s proposal for a new bill aimed at drastically restricting the number of Palestinians eligible for compensation from the Jewish state for damages inflicted by Israeli forces since the beginning of the second intifada.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — and Moked — Defense of the Individual — sent a statement to the Israeli Justice Ministry on Sept. 5 but only released it to the public yesterday.
Moked attorney Yossi Wolfson, who wrote the letter, charged that the Justice Ministry’s memorandum for an amendment to the Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law was a “revolting creation.”
