It has been well over a year since the Jerusalem District Court ruled that at least a half dozen Palestinian families were to be evicted from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem and it appears a new wave of violence has left a number of people on both sides dead.

Late last week, wide-scale violence broke out between illegal Jewish settlers and Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem after two Israeli soldiers were killed by armed locals.

Armed resistance to illegal military occupation, as is the case with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, is allowed under international law and expressly condoned in the Geneva Convention.

Nevertheless, and with tensions already running high over the killings, a group of Jewish settlers, went on a rampage in the occupied West Bank, as they attacked several Palestinian shops and locals with rocks and iron bars.

The attacks by the group of Jewish settlers led to the wounding of 40 Palestinians in the northwestern region of the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile inside the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, clashes erupted last week after Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian residents, resulting in the hospitalization of 18 people, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported.

In response to a five-day-long siege imposed by the Israeli Defense Forces on the Shaft Refugee Camp in occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinians there decided to hold a rare general strike.

“The tight siege by the occupation forces in Shuafat Refugee Camp, Anata and Dahiyat al-Salam is a collective punishment against the residents. We are talking about a hundred and fifty thousand people without a hospital, or an ambulance, and the sick cannot go to the hospital for emergency treatment,” Fatah leader Rafaat Elyan told The Media Line.

Amid this wave of violence, however, has emerged reports of a new Palestinian armed faction that has sought to challenge the Israeli police dominance over the city of Nablus, which has seen a growing illegal Israeli military presence in recent years.

The armed Palestinian faction dubbed “The Lion’s Den” is reportedly a Nablus-based group that has recently carried out a string of attacks against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) inside the occupied West Bank city.

According to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, the Lion’s Den is comprised of approximately 30 local members who are living inside of Nablus.
“We will work out how to reach them and we will eliminate them,” Gantz said.

As Israel attempts to arrest the Lion’s Den members allegedly responsible for the killing of two soldiers, the death toll in the occupied West Bank is expected to rise in the coming days, as the violence continues in several areas.

In one of the rarest instances in the last two decades, the occupied West Bank has recorded a higher death toll than the isolated Gaza Strip in 2022.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, since the start of the year, at least 161 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, including 51 killed by the Israeli forces in August during their three-day-long attack on Gaza.