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Suspected Palestinian Shooting Attack at West Bank Car Wash Kills 2 Israelis

Israeli security forces block a road following a reported attack in the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, on August 19, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
Israeli security forces block a road following a reported attack in the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, on August 19, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
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Suspected Palestinian Shooting Attack at West Bank Car Wash Kills 2 Israelis

Israeli security forces block a road following a reported attack in the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, on August 19, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
Israeli security forces block a road following a reported attack in the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, on August 19, 2023. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

Two Israelis were killed in a suspected Palestinian shooting attack on a car wash in a volatile stretch of the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the latest outburst of violence to rock the region.
The Israeli military said it was searching for suspects and setting up roadblocks near the town of Hawara, a flashpoint area in the northern West Bank, which has seen repeated attacks including one deadly shooting that triggered a rampage by Jewish West Bank settlers who torched Palestinian property, said The Associated Press.
Saturday's shooting attack came after Palestinian medics reported that a 19-year-old Palestinian died of wounds sustained in an Israeli military raid into the West Bank on Wednesday.
The latest attack is part of a relentless spiral of violence that has fueled the worst fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank in nearly two decades. Since spring last year, Israel has launched near-nightly raids in Palestinian towns in response to deadly Palestinian attacks.
Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed since the start of this year and some 29 people have been killed by Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that time, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel claims most of the Palestinians killed were “militants”. But stone throwing youths protesting the incursions and those not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Israeli paramedics said that when they arrived at the Hawara car wash, two Israeli males, aged 60 and 29, were found unconscious with gunshot wounds. Israeli media reported the two were father and son and identified them as Shay Silas Nigreka and his Aviad Nir from the southern Israeli city of Ashdod.
Underscoring the severity of the attack, the country's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, visited the scene.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the family and vowed that the military would track down the shooter.
“The security forces are working diligently to find the murderer and settle accounts, just as we have done with all the murderers so far,” Netanyahu said.
Videos circulating online showed Israeli soldiers walking across a pool of blood at the car wash to help move two bodies on stretchers to awaiting ambulances.
Several Israelis have been killed in Hawara in the current round of fighting. The death of two brothers, residents of a nearby settlement, last February set off a rampage by settlers through the town. Crowds of settlers torched dozens of cars and homes in some of the worst such violence in decades.
Similar settler mob violence has taken place elsewhere in the West Bank since. Israeli rights groups say settler violence has worsened and that radical settlers have become emboldened because Israel’s far-right government has settler leaders in key positions who have vowed to take an especially hard line against the Palestinians.
After the deadly February shooting in Hawara, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand settler supporter, called for Israel to “erase” the town from the map. He later walked back the remark after fierce criticism.
Palestinian militant groups praised the shooting attack, with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad congratulating the perpetrators. Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Al-Qanou called the attack a “heroic shooting operation.” But the groups stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attack.
Also on Saturday, 19-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Abu Asab died of a gunshot wound to the head suffered Wednesday during an Israeli military raid on the Balata refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. At the time, the Israeli military had said that it raided Balata seeking to destroy an underground weapons factory when a gunfight erupted. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the Fatah party, claimed Abu Asab as a member.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle “militant” networks and thwart future attacks. Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces, inspire more militancy and entrench Israeli control over lands they seek for a hoped-for future state.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Some 700,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

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Palestinians Trek across Rubble to Return to Their Homes as Gaza Ceasefire Takes Hold

An internally displaced Palestinian woman sits at the rubble of her destroyed house in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 19 January 2025, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. (EPA)
An internally displaced Palestinian woman sits at the rubble of her destroyed house in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 19 January 2025, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. (EPA)
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Palestinians Trek across Rubble to Return to Their Homes as Gaza Ceasefire Takes Hold

An internally displaced Palestinian woman sits at the rubble of her destroyed house in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 19 January 2025, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. (EPA)
An internally displaced Palestinian woman sits at the rubble of her destroyed house in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 19 January 2025, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. (EPA)

Even before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was fully in place Sunday, Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza Strip began to return to the remains of the homes they had evacuated during the 15-month war.

Majida Abu Jarad made quick work of packing the contents of her family’s temporary lodging in the sprawling tent city of Muwasi, just north of the strip’s southern border with Egypt.

At the start of the war, they were forced to flee their house in Gaza’s northern town of Beit Hanoun, where they used to gather around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine.

The house from those fond memories is gone, and for the past year, Abu Jarad, her husband and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, following one evacuation order after another by the Israeli military.

Seven times they fled, she said, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them as they crowded with strangers to sleep in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.

Now the family is preparing to begin the trek home — or to whatever remains of it — and to reunite with relatives who remained in the north.

"As soon as they said that the truce would start on Sunday, we started packing our bags and deciding what we would take, not caring that we would still be living in tents," Abu Jarad said.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The Israeli military bombardment that followed the attack has flattened large swaths of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million of its 2.3 million residents.

Over 46,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the fatalities but does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. More than 110,000 Palestinians have been wounded, the ministry said. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

Even before the ceasefire officially took effect — and as tank shelling continued overnight and into the morning — many Palestinians began trekking through the wreckage to reach their homes, some on foot and others hauling their belongings on donkey carts.

"They’re returning to retrieve their loved ones under the rubble," said Mohamed Mahdi, a displaced Palestinian and father of two. He was forced to leave his three-story home in Gaza City’s southeastern Zaytoun neighborhood a few months ago.

Mahdi managed to reach his home Sunday morning, walking amid the rubble from western Gaza. On the road he said he saw the Hamas-run police force being deployed to the streets in Gaza City, helping people returning to their homes.

Despite the vast scale of the destruction and uncertain prospects for rebuilding, "people were celebrating," he said. "They are happy. They started clearing the streets and removing the rubble of their homes. It’s a moment they’ve waited for for 15 months."

Um Saber, a 48-year-old widow and mother of six children, returned to her hometown of Beit Lahiya. She asked to be identified only by her honorific, meaning "mother of Saber," out of safety concerns.

Speaking by phone, she said her family had found bodies in the street as they trekked home, some of which appeared to have been lying in the open for weeks.

When they reached Beit Lahiya, they found their home and much of the surrounding area reduced to rubble, she said. Some families immediately began digging through the debris in search of missing loved ones. Others began trying to clear areas where they could set up tents.

Um Saber said she also found the area's Kamal Adwan hospital "completely destroyed."

"It’s no longer a hospital at all," she said. "They destroyed everything."

The hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli forces waging an offensive in largely isolated northern Gaza against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped.

The military has claimed that Hamas fighters operate inside Kamal Adwan, which hospital officials have denied.

In Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, residents returned to find massive destruction across the city that was once a hub for displaced families fleeing Israel’s bombardment elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave. Some found human remains amid the rubble of houses and the streets.

"It’s an indescribable scene. It’s like you see in a Hollywood horror movie," said Mohamed Abu Taha, a Rafah resident, speaking to The Associated Press as he and his brother were inspecting his family home in the city’s Salam neighborhood. "Flattened houses, human remains, skulls and other body parts, in the street and in the rubble."

He shared footage of piles of rubble that he said had been his family’s house. "I want to know how they destroyed our home."

The families' return to their homes comes amid looming uncertainty about whether the ceasefire deal will bring more than a temporary halt to the fighting, who will govern the enclave and how it will be rebuilt.

Not all families will be able to return home immediately. Under the terms of the deal, returning displaced people will only be able to cross the Netzarim corridor from south to north beginning seven days into the ceasefire.

And those who do return may face a long wait to rebuild their houses.

The United Nations has said that reconstruction could take more than 350 years if Gaza remains under an Israeli blockade. Using satellite data, the United Nations estimated last month that 69% of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including more than 245,000 homes. With over 100 trucks working full time, it would take more than 15 years just to clear the rubble away.

But for many families, the immediate relief overrode fears about the future.

"We will remain in a tent, but the difference is that the bleeding will stop, the fear will stop, and we will sleep reassured," Abu Jarad said.