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By Qassam Muaddi / Mondoweiss
Six Israelis were killed and 17 others were wounded in a shooting attack in Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli media reported.
According to the Israeli Police, two Palestinian men in their twenties from the towns of Qatanna and Qebeibeh, northwest of Jerusalem, allegedly entered a bus at the Ramot Junction in Jerusalem and opened fire at passengers. The men then exited the bus and clashed with armed Israelis before being shot dead.
The Palestinian towns of Qatanna and Qebeibeh are part of the northwest Jerusalem villages, which Israel has isolated from the city through the separation wall, excluding the dense Palestinian population of the area from the Palestinian capital. It remains unclear how both shooters were able to enter Jerusalem.
The men were later identified as students at Birzeit University north of Ramallah, according to a statement by the Birzeit student movement. The university announced that classes on campus would be suspended for the day.
At the site of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the media that Israel was going to “continue its mission in Gaza,” as well as “in Judea and Samaria,” using the Zionist term for the occupied West Bank. The Israeli PM stressed that Israel would “increase its operations” in the territory following the attack.
Standing beside Netanyahu at the site of the attack, Israel’s hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took the opportunity to slam the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled yesterday to ease the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. “This sends a [positive] message to the terrorists, that their detention conditions will be eased,” Ben-Gvir said, adding that Israel will “increase the arming of Israelis, and will punish the families of terrorists.”
Israel regularly practices policies of collective punishment against the families of Palestinians who have carried out attacks against Israel, including punitive home demolitions of the family homes of suspected attackers.
Adding to Ben-Gvir’s statements, Netanyahu said that “we are all at war, and you, too, are at war,” addressing the Israeli Supreme Court. “We will not change the detention conditions of terrorists,” he added.
The far-right minister has been behind a series of decisions hardening the detention conditions of Palestinians in Israeli jails since he took the position as Minister of National Security in 2022. This included reducing food quantity and quality, overcrowding in cells, reducing yard time to one hour a day, deliberate medical neglect, and banning all family visitations.
After October 7, prison conditions worsened dramatically, as the use of systematic torture, rape, beatings, and cruel and degrading treatment became a regular feature of Israeli detention facilities, which have been likened to “torture camps.”
These measures impact more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, 3,500 of whom are detained without charges, and only 550 of whom are serving charges for acts that have resulted in the death of Israelis.
Collective punishment as Israeli annexation and displacement policy continues
In Qatanna and Qebeibeh, Israeli forces invaded both towns, sealing them off and surrounding the homes of the shooters’ families. Israeli forces raided several homes in both towns and arrested a number of Palestinians, including the father of one of the slain shooters. In each town, Israeli soldiers conducted field interrogations. Israeli forces also closed the only tell road that allows Palestinians to connect the northwest Jerusalem villages and the rest of the West Bank, isolating the area entirely.
The attack on Monday is the first shooting carried out by Palestinians from the West Bank since January, at the height of the Israeli offensive that led to the complete depopulation of the Jenin refugee camp and the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian families from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps. During the past eight months, Israel has ramped up its crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank, arresting thousands, raiding towns and cities, imposing more than 900 checkpoints, iron gates, and road blocks, and revoking working permits. Israeli settler violence has also skyrocketed during the past months, claiming the lives of at least six Palestinians since June.
Israel has also expanded its settlements in the West Bank, confiscating thousands of dunams of land and approving the building of 22 new settlements. Meanwhile, the Israeli Knesset passed a law last July allowing the government to annex the West Bank, with the Israeli government discussing annexation twice since late August. Hardline Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who runs the body in charge of administering the West Bank, proposed a map to annex over 82% of the West Bank last week, including Bethlehem. Following the attack on Monday, Smotrich called on the villages of the shooters to be wiped out, and for further punishment of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank.
Israeli offensives in the West Bank have so far displaced over 42,000 Palestinians in the northern West Bank cities, according to UNRWA. The Israeli army and Israeli settlers have also displaced at least 12,000 Palestinian Bedouins from 62 Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley, according to the al-Baidar Organization for the Defense of Bedouin Rights.
In January, Israeli internal intelligence issued a warning of a potential “explosion of the situation” in the West Bank, under the pressure of military and economic restrictions.
In late August, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center, Michael Milstein, told the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot that the West Bank was going through a “silent tsunami” that was transforming the territory under Israeli pressure.
The academic added that Palestinians in the West Bank have been “maintaining silence, which reflects their despair towards the political situation and their political leadership, pushing more among them to support a one-state solution.”
In late August, the Palestinian President’s office warned in a statement that Israel was “pushing towards the explosion of the situation in the West Bank” in order to expel Palestinians.
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Qassam Muaddi
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi.