Human Rights Voices

While the UN devotes its human rights operations to the demonization of the democratic state of Israel above all others and condemns the United States more often than the vast majority of non-democracies around the world, the voices of real victims around the world must be heard.

Palestinian Authority/Gaza, December 19, 2016

Bus comes under fire in West Bank

An empty bus traveling in the central West Bank came under fire Monday evening, and sustained light damage. There were no casualties in the shooting near the settlements of Dolev and Talmon, northwest of Ramallah.

"Bullet holes were identified on the bus," the IDF said in a statement.

The army said it was searching for the perpetrator.

The attack came a day after an Israeli man was lightly injured in a drive-by shooting attack near the nearby settlement of Halamish late Sunday night.

According to reports, the attacker opened fire from a passing vehicle on the road near the Palestinian village of Aboud, close to Ramallah.

The injured man, said to be in his 20s, received medical treatment at the scene for wounds to his face from glass shards, sustained when the gunfire shattered the window on the driver's side.

He was later taken to a hospital. The vehicle sustained some damage.

Last week, a gunman opened fire on an Israeli car with two children in the back seat outside Ramallah, causing damage to the vehicle, but no injuries.

Earlier that day, a 21-year-old Palestinian man attacked a group of police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem with a screwdriver, stabbing one of them in the head and another in the upper body, police said. In response, the officers opened fire, shooting the assailant and mortally wounding him. He later died in hospital.

A spate of stabbings, car-rammings and shooting attacks by Palestinian assailants that began a year ago has waned over the last six months, though sporadic incidents have persisted.

From October 2015 to October 2016, 36 Israelis, two Americans and an Eritrean national were killed in stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks.

According to AFP figures, some 238 Palestinians, a Jordanian and a Sudanese migrant were also killed during the violent spurt, most of them in the course of carrying out attacks, Israel says, and many of the others in clashes with troops in the West Bank and at the Gaza border, as well as in Israeli airstrikes in the Strip.