Palestinian gunmen kill 4 Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank

Two Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israeli civilians outside a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday afternoon, the Israeli army said, in the deadliest attack on Israelis since January.

The shootings took place at a restaurant and gas station next to the settlement of Eli, about 40 kilometers north of Jerusalem, a video showed. An Israeli civilian shot and killed one of the attackers, a Palestinian from a nearby Arab town, and a second attacker was later shot in his getaway vehicle after a manhunt, security officials said.

Hamas, the Islamist militia and political movement that controls the Gaza Strip, said the attackers were members of its armed wing and described the violence as a response to recent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, police raids on a mosque in Jerusalem and military raids on Gaza . the northern West Bank.

Recently, Hamas has often avoided direct acknowledgment of any involvement in violence in the West Bank. The decision to claim responsibility this time raised the possibility of Israeli retaliation against Hamas leaders and infrastructure in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “Our armed forces are now working on the ground to settle accounts with the killers. We have already proven in recent months that we deal with all killers without exception. Those who attacked us are either in the grave or in prison, and so it will be here.”

The attack also renewed calls within Netanyahu’s governing coalition — the most nationalist and socially conservative in Israeli history — for even stronger action in the area.

Israeli forces are already conducting daily raids on Palestinian towns in the West Bank, experts say the most protracted military operation there since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the 2000s. One such raid on Monday sparked an unusually lengthy firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in another part of the northern West Bank, killing six Palestinians and causing rare damage to Israeli military vehicles.

That brought the death toll for Palestinians this year to more than 160. Most of them were killed in the West Bank during Israeli military raids — one of the highest death rates in the past 15 years.

But some right-wing lawmakers in Israel say the military still needs to do more to counter a wave of Arab violence that killed at least 29 Israelis by 2023, most of them in attacks by Palestinians.

Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It has since occupied the area and built hundreds of Jewish settlements that most countries consider to be illegal under international law, but which settlers view as legitimate reclamation of land that was ruled by Jews in ancient times.

The declining likelihood of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the entrenchment of Israel’s control over the territory, and a weakening of mainstream Palestinian leadership there have all contributed to an increase in Palestinian militancy. Much of it is driven by a new generation of small armed groups frustrated with the status quo.

The Israeli government announced last week that it would approve settlement construction in the West Bank more quickly and easily, and is expected to make plans next week for more than 4,000 new settlement housing units in the territory.

The shooting took place on Tuesday on the main road in the West Bank, around a gas station mainly used by Israeli settlers but easily accessible to Palestinians. The site was previously attacked in 2015.

The Israeli army said in a statement that the gunmen first shot three civilians at a restaurant near the entrance to Eli, before killing another person at the nearby gas station and wounding several others. One of the attackers was then shot by a passerby and the second drove north for about 25 miles before being intercepted and shot by a group of Israeli security agents.

Eli was founded in 1984 on hundreds of acres of land claimed by nearby Palestinian villages, but which Israeli officials said had no private owners. Now home to about 4,600 Israelis, it houses an academy that prepares religious Israelis for military service and whose founders are known for their ultra-conservative views.

Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Iyad Abuheweila from Gaza City.