Hamas Fighter or a UN Worker?

Jerusalem: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said yesterday one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank.

The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in that Palestinian territory in more than a decade.

But he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation which began days ago and is ongoing.

UNRWA identified the employee as a sanitation labourer.

However, a military statement said Israeli forces had “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa – northeast of Nablus – killing “five armed terrorists” in an air strike.

It added that a sixth militant was also killed.

Israel has repeatedly said that UNRWA has been helping Hamas, from hiding Israeli hostages to letting terrorists fire on its troops from inside its “safe zones”.

Violence in the West Bank had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in Gaza but in late August Israel began its large-scale raids.

Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades,” the United Nations human rights chief said this week.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew from Tubas, allowing the funerals there to go ahead.

Osaid Kharaz, who identified himself as a Hamas activist, told reporters at the funeral in Tubas that Israel “is attempting to impose a new reality and undermine the popular support for the resistance in the West Bank.”

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced on September 4 that the military would use its “full strength” to strike Palestinian militants in the West Bank. He said he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes “wherever necessary” in order to “avoid endangering soldiers”.

Days later, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Israel aimed “to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza.”