GENEVA: The United Nations human rights said on Friday the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was deteriorating sharply and he called on Israel to reset its policies and comply with international law.
Violence has surged in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has for over a year been conducting regular sweeps leading to repeated clashes with Palestinian fighters. Israeli settlers have also been involved in clashes.
“This week’s violence in the occupied West Bank risks spiralling out of control, fuelled by strident
political rhetoric, and an escalation in the use of advanced military weaponry by Israel,” Volker Turk said via a spokesperson at a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
He referred to air strikes with helicopter gunships on Jenin refugee camp on Monday, calling them a “major intensification of the use of weaponry more generally associated with the conduct of armed hostilities, rather than a law enforcement situation”.
The helicopters were called in as troops were engaged in a long gunbattle.