Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Palestinian communities in the West Bank should resemble the “Jabalia” of Gaza.
Three Israelis were killed and eight others injured in a shooting near the illegal West Bank settlement of Kedumim, Israeli authorities said.
Israeli media cited security officials as saying that at least two Palestinian gunmen opened fire on cars and a bus outside the settlement before fleeing the scene on Monday.
The shooting killed two women in their 60s and a 35-year-old police investigator from the illegal settlement of Ariel.
The incident comes as war rages in Gaza and attempts are being made to reach a truce agreement.
After the shooting, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appeared to call for all-out violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, mirroring the devastation Israel unleashed in Gaza.
“Al-Funduk, Nablus and Jenin must be like Jabalia,” he said, referring to the northern Gaza area that Israel has razed and deprived of humanitarian aid for weeks.
Israel has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Jabalia. United Nations experts and several rights groups have also said that Israel is carrying out genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
“Terrorism in the West Bank and terrorism from Gaza and Iran are the same terrorism – and it must be defeated,” Smotrich added Monday, according to the Times of Israel.
Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel has intensified its repression against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, killing hundreds of people. Last year was also marked by a surge in settler attacks.
Palestinian gunmen – some associated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – have also carried out attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories in recent months.
Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, welcomed Monday’s shooting, saying efforts by Israel and its agents to prevent “West Bank heroes” from supporting Gaza are “doomed to failure.”
“The enemy must know that he will never enjoy security until our people have it,” Abu Obeida said in a statement.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hamdah Salhut said a manhunt for suspects in Monday’s attack was underway across the occupied West Bank.
From Amman, Jordan, following the Palestinian Authority’s suspension of Tel Aviv Tribune’s operations in the occupied West Bank, Salhut said Israeli authorities had closed several roads and blocked many areas in their search.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces would capture the attackers.
“We will reach out to the dastardly murderers and bring them and all those who helped them to justice,” he wrote in an article on X. “No one will be spared.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in an advisory opinion in July that the Israeli presence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must end “as quickly as possible.”
Alon Liel, former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that amid escalating violence in the region, many Israelis accept that there is “no alternative” to fighting, especially among young people.
“It’s a very dangerous attitude that is developing here,” Liel told Tel Aviv Tribune on Monday.
“We need a very fundamental change in Israel’s thinking and perhaps a fundamental change in the attitude of the international community (towards) the conflict as well. »