The United Nations envoy to the Middle East on Saturday said he was “horrified” by the killing of a Palestinian stabber who security forces said wounded an Israeli police officer in the West Bank.
On Friday afternoon, Ammar Mifleh tried to enter a vehicle of an Israeli couple in the town of Huwara, near Nablus, Border Police said. While trying to break through the locked door, one of the occupants — an off-duty IDF officer — shot and wounded Mifleh with his handgun.
Mifleh then ran at a nearby Border Police officer and stabbed him in the face, lightly injuring him.
Graphic footage posted to social media showed another Border Police officer trying to apprehend Mifleh after the stabbing, as two other Palestinians were trying to pull him free.
The second officer managed to pull Mifleh away from them in a headlock, but he then briefly freed himself from his grasp and appeared to try and grab the officer’s automatic weapon. The officer then allowed the weapon to fall to the ground as he pulled a handgun from a holster and fired four times point-blank, killing him.
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“Horrified by today’s killing of a Palestinian man, Ammar Mifleh, during a scuffle with an Israeli soldier near Huwara in the o[ccupied] West Bank,” UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland said on Twitter.
???? إن دم عمار مفلح يجب أن يتحول إلى وقود ثورة تحرق "إسرائيل"#إعدام_حوارة pic.twitter.com/n3l1AB6Lwm
— يوسف ابوزكي (@YAbwzky) December 3, 2022
“My heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family. Such incidents must be fully & promptly investigated, & those responsible held accountable,” he added.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon slammed Wennesland’s statement, calling it a “total distortion of reality.”
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland briefs, over video conference, the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question on January 26, 2021. (Daniela Penkova/UNSCO/File)
“This incident is a terror attack, in which an Israeli policeman was stabbed in his face and the life of another police officer was threatened and consequently he shot his assailant,” Nahshon said on Twitter.
“This is NOT a ‘scuffle’-this is a terror attack!” he added.
Border Police said that the officer with stab wounds was subsequently evacuated for medical treatment, as was the officer who subdued the attacker.
Injuries caused to a police officer following a stabbing attack in the northern West Bank town of Hawara on December 2, 2022. (Israel Police)
Huwara is a frequent flashpoint with a highway running through the town being a main route for settlers traveling in the northern West Bank.
Mifleh was the ninth Palestinian killed in West Bank violence in less than four days.
A knife used by an alleged Palestinian attacker in the West Bank town of Huwara on December 2, 2022 (Israel Police)
Two Palestinian terror group members were killed in heavy clashes with Israeli troops that broke out during a pre-dawn Thursday arrest raid near the northern West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp. Another Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the northern West Bank town of Yabed on Wednesday afternoon. Four Palestinians were killed in clashes with the IDF throughout the West Bank on Tuesday and another Palestinian was killed after carrying out a car-ramming attack that seriously wounded a soldier that same day.
Tensions have been high in the West Bank over the past year, with the IDF launching a major anti-terror offensive mostly focused on the northern West Bank to deal with a series of Palestinian attacks that have left 31 people in Israel and the West Bank dead since the start of the year.
The operation has netted more than 2,500 arrests in near-nightly raids, but has also left more than 150 Palestinians dead, many of them — but not all — while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces.
