On the evening of 25 March, two Israeli soldiers were injured in a drive-by shooting operation by Palestinian resistance fighters in the town of Huwara, in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) claimed responsibility for the shooting, while the Israeli security forces claimed they were in the area in pursuit of the perpetrator.

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera journalist Natasha Ghoneim said that “any hope of this being a calm beginning to the holy month of Ramadan evaporated on this first Saturday of the month.”

Subsequent to the shooting, shops in the area were immediately closed down, while Israeli checkpoints prevented people from getting through.

This shooting operation marks the third time in the span of a month that Palestinian resistance fighters confront Israeli forces in Huwara. 

Last week, a resistance fighter opened fire on an Israeli car in Huwara, injuring two Israeli settlers in the process, as an official meeting between members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and an Israeli delegation in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh was taking place. The summit included security representatives from Israel, the US, Jordan, and Egypt.

The individual behind the previous resistance operation in Huwara was identified as Laith Nassar, and reportedly used a Palestinian-made Carlo weapon, commonly used by the resistance in the occupied West Bank, as weapons such as the Kalashnikov remain exclusively in the hands of the PA and its security services.

The meeting at Sharm al-Sheikh comes after PA President Mahmoud Abbas promised and instructed PA security forces to confront Israeli troops and settlers if they enter Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank. However, the PA is notoriously known for collaborating with Israel in several instances, and over the years, more Palestinians have expressed resentment towards the PA. 

The very first Huwara operation took place last month, on 26 February, when a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli settlers on highway 60. The attack disrupted the previous summit in Aqaba on the Red Sea coast, which was hosted by Jordan’s King Abdullah and attended by Israel, the PA, Egypt, Jordan, and the US.

Following the operation, settlers stormed Huwara and proceeded to burn 75 homes, injuring nearly 400 Palestinians and killing one. According to eyewitness reports, the Israeli military witnessed the violence but took no action to stop it. The Israeli military estimated that between 300 and 400 people participated in the wide-scale attacks.