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Palestinian Killed in Clashes With Israeli Troops

Confrontations increasingly violent as search for missing teens continues

by
Stephanie Butnick
June 20, 2014
A Palestinian protester hurls a rock during clashes between youth from the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Jalazoun and Israeli forces nearby the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the Palestinian village of Dura on February 7, 2014. (ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images)
A Palestinian protester hurls a rock during clashes between youth from the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Jalazoun and Israeli forces nearby the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the Palestinian village of Dura on February 7, 2014. (ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images)

A Palestinian teenager was killed by gunfire in an early morning clash with Israeli forces in the West Bank town of Duma, the New York Times reports. The IDF’s overnight raid was part of the ongoing search for three Israeli teens kidnapped in the West Bank last Thursday.

Witnesses in Dura, a West Bank town of 28,000 near Hebron, said Mohammed Jihad Dudeen, 15, was fatally shot around 5 a.m., as he and other youths hurled rocks at some 150 soldiers storming their neighborhood. “One of them crouched and opened fire on the boy,” said Bassam al-Awadeh, 42, who said he watched from about 150 yards away. “The boy was hit in his heart and his abdomen.”

According to the IDF, 25 Palestinians were arrested in the raid, bringing the total number of arrests this week to 330. Israel has blamed the kidnappings on the militant group Hamas, and according to the Times, 240 of those arrested were Hamas leaders.

The search for the missing boys has doubled as a Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank with nightly raids and arrests, and the confrontations are growing increasingly violent. Dudin was the second casualty of the military offensive; a 20-year-old Palestinian was killed Monday in clashes at the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.