Israeli military restricts West Bank travel

Deadly attacks also prompt curtailing tax revenue flow to Palestinian government

JERUSALEM -- After two deadly attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank in two days, Israel announced sweeping measures Friday to limit the movement of Palestinian residents and punish their government.

The moves came as an international report warned both sides that their actions could contribute to a state of "perpetual occupation and conflict."

The Israeli military said Friday that it would prevent all Palestinian travel between towns and villages in the southern West Bank, including the major city of Hebron, after an Israeli motorist was shot and killed there Friday. It also ordered in two more battalions to secure the area.

The Israeli government, meanwhile, said it would withhold some crucial tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, a pressure tactic it reserves for extreme situations.

The closings in the West Bank were the harshest measures imposed on Palestinians since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the West Bank in June 2014, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Friday. The kidnappings were part of a string of events that culminated in a devastating war that summer between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

"This isn't a normal situation, and that's why we are taking substantial steps on the ground," Lerner said, adding that the moves were intended to "disrupt, prevent and foil additional attacks."

Late Friday, Lerner reported on Twitter that a rocket fired from Gaza had hit and damaged a building in the border town of Sderot; Israeli news outlets said it damaged a kindergarten, empty at that hour. Such rocket strikes typically prompt overnight airstrikes from Israel in retaliation.

The West Bank actions were announced after one or more gunmen fired on a family traveling in a car near Hebron, killing the father and seriously wounding the mother, the Israeli military reported. Two of their children were also injured when the car overturned along a narrow highway that runs through the southern West Bank. The assailants fled.

The shooting came a day after a Palestinian teenager stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli-American girl while she slept in her bedroom in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.

The violence suggested that the surge in stabbings and shootings that began in October has intensified after waning for months. The attacks have left more than 30 Israelis dead. More than 210 Palestinians have also been killed, most while carrying out attacks or when thought to be about to do so.

Just hours before the emergency restrictions were enacted around Hebron on Friday, the so-called Quartet for Middle East Peace took both sides to task: Israel for building settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians for inciting deadly attacks.

The Quartet, which is made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, said that Israel should cease its policy of building settlements in the occupied West Bank, stop setting aside land for "exclusive Israeli use" and end the practice of denying Palestinians permission to build homes.

The report also sharply criticized Palestinian groups for glorifying individuals who carry out deadly attacks, and it pointed to the Palestinian Authority's lack of control on the restive Gaza Strip, calling on Palestinian leaders to "cease incitement to violence."

The report was an attempt to nudge the Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations, which broke down more than two years ago.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Friday that he welcomed the report's criticism of Palestinian incitement.

"This culture of hatred poisons minds and destroys lives and stands as the single greatest obstacle to progress toward peace," the statement said.

Netanyahu's office added, however, that the report "perpetuates the myth that Israeli construction in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace."

The prime minister's office also announced that the government planned to deduct tax revenue from the estimated $130 million transferred monthly to the Palestinian Authority.

The statement did not say how much would be deducted, only that the amount was meant to equal what the Israeli government says is "being transferred by the Palestinian Authority to terrorists and their families."

Palestinian officials did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.

The Quartet's nine-page report contains no hint that the group favors any legally binding measures by its members or the U.N. Security Council.

The U.N. envoy who was involved in drafting the report, Nickolay Mladenov, said the goal was to show both sides that it is in their interest to return to negotiations.

A Section on 07/02/2016

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