Israeli occupation soldiers conduct a patrol in the occupied West Bank. (Photo credit: Israel Defense Forces)
On 14 November, Israeli army forces killed a Palestinian teenage girl near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The ministry identified the victim as 15-year-old Fulla Rasmi Abdelazeez Masalmeh, “who was fatally hit by a bullet” fired by Israeli soldiers “in a dawn raid in Beitunia,” near Ramallah, according to an official statement reported by Al-Jazeera.
Sources quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA said the soldiers opened fire on the vehicle “for no apparent reason,” and wounded another occupant of the car who was identified as Anas Hassouneh, who has been detained by the army.
A witness told WAFA that Masalmeh and Hassouneh were in a vehicle driving up a road, unaware that Israeli forces had stationed themselves at several points until they were surprised by the army’s presence.
Israeli forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians so far this year, including 144 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 50 people in the Jenin area, more than 50 people in the Gaza Strip, as well as four in Israel territory, according to WAFA.
On 18 October, a report released by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories recommended that UN member states develop “a plan to end the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime.”
“The realization of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination requires the definitive dismantling of Israel’s colonial occupation and apartheid practices,” wrote Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur.
According to the report, nearly 4,500 Palestinians are currently detained, 730 of whom are held without charge and largely on the basis of secret evidence, while children as young as 12 are subjected to arbitrary arrests and detention measures – between 500 and 700 minors are detained by the Israeli government each year.
Meanwhile, over 600 Palestinian political prisoners suffer acute illness inside the Israeli occupations and are at risk of dying, according to a statement released by human rights lawyer Abdel Nasser Farwana on 10 September.