Zein Khalil and Rania Abushamala<\/p>\n
25 July 2026\u2022Update: 25 July 2026<\/p>\n
The leader of Israel\u2019s Democrats party, Yair Golan, warned Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government is turning the occupied West Bank into a \u201cpowder keg.\u201d<\/p>\n
His remarks came a day after Israeli occupiers, protected by the army, attacked the town of Tell near Nablus in the northern West Bank, killing four Palestinians and injuring four others, according to Palestinian sources.<\/p>\n
Two Israelis were also killed in a shooting as residents confronted the attack, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources.<\/p>\n
Following the incident, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered a \u201cwide-scale\u201d military offensive in the occupied territory.<\/p>\n
In a post on the US social media company X, Golan accused the government and far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir of \u201cdeliberately\u201d creating an \u201cexplosive reality\u201d in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
He said occupiers had for months systematically sought to provoke friction, inflame tensions and drag the Israeli army and the state into a broader confrontation.<\/p>\n
Instead of stopping them, Netanyahu\u2019s government provides them with \u201csupport and encouragement\u201d while announcing the establishment of additional settlement outposts and \u201cillegal farms,\u201d Golan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis deepens the danger and increases escalation instead of distancing civilians from friction points,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu and Katz are turning the West Bank into \u201ca powder keg that threatens Israel\u2019s security,\u201d Golan said.<\/p>\n
He warned that the price of escalation is \u201cpaid in blood,\u201d particularly by Israeli soldiers sent to confront the consequences of what he called a \u201creckless policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golan called for a \u201ccomprehensive investigation\u201d into the violence near the Havat Gilad settlement and expressed regret over the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n
He demanded the arrest and prosecution of everyone who broke the law or participated in the violence.<\/p>\n
His remarks came amid continued Israeli escalation across the West Bank. The Israeli army detained more than 75 Palestinians during raids Saturday, including over 40 in Tel, while eight Palestinians were injured in an attack by occupiers on the village of Far\u2019ata, east of Qalqilya.<\/p>\n
Since October 2023, Israeli forces and occupiers have killed more than 1,182 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, injured thousands and detained around 24,000, according to official Palestinian figures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zein Khalil and Rania Abushamala 25 July 2026\u2022Update: 25 July 2026 The leader of Israel\u2019s Democrats party, Yair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-559109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}