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Israel Beefs up Forces in Palestinian Territories for Possible Violence
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday dispatched reinforcements to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to prepare for possible escalation of violence, military sources said.
The beef-up was ordered after military estimation revealed that the Palestinians may launch unusual attacks on Israeli targets while they mark the 12th anniversary of declaration of independence in Algiers, Algeria, the sources said.
Although the sources estimated that the Palestinians will not declare statehood on Wednesday as expected earlier, the mainstream Fatah movement of the Palestine Liberation Organization still wanted to mark the day with protests.
Palestinian activists said that they may march toward Jewish settlements dotting the occupied territories and cut off roads to those settlements, showing the world that these areas belong to the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Israeli border police reportedly wounded three Palestinians, one critically, by "accidental discharge" Wednesday morning. One incident took place at a roadblock near Hebron, in which an Israeli officer "cooked off his rifle and wounded two Palestinians".
Another similar incident happened at a checkpoint near Bet Shemesh, a Jewish settlement 20 kilometers west of Jerusalem, and one Palestinian was slightly wounded.
The IDF have begun investigation into the two "accidentally firing" incidents immediately.
The army is also probing a report by Army Radio Wednesday morning that a Palestinian was stoned to death overnight on the road between the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus.
The Palestinian's vehicle, which he was driving, was hit by a barrage of stones thrown by Jewish settlers, according to Palestinian security force. Four other passengers in the car were injured.
In a separate violence, a firebomb was thrown onto the porch of an apartment belonging to an Arab family in the southern Jerusalem Gilo neighborhood Wednesday morning, and two people were treated for smoke inhalation. Israeli police said the firebomb was thrown by "Palestinian terrorists."
The Jewish-dominated Gilo was built on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and has been a focus of Israeli-Palestinian gun battles since the violence broke out in late September, which has claimed over 200 lives and wounded thousands of others, most of them Palestinians.
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