Palestinian teen killed in protest as tensions rise over US plan

A Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli fire during clashes in the southern part of the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has said.

“Mohammed al-Haddad, 17, was killed by a bullet that penetrated his heart in clashes with occupation [forces] in the area of Bab al-Zawya,” according to the ministry.

The teenager was killed in Hebron, where a few hundred hard-line Jewish settlers live in a heavily guarded enclave in the heart of a Palestinian city.

Relatively small protests have broken out across the occupied West Bank since United States President Donald Trump unveiled his Middle East plan last week, with demonstrators sometimes throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli forces.

The Israeli military spokesman’s office said in a statement that soldiers “identified a Palestinian who hurled a Molotov cocktail at them [and] responded with fire in order to remove the threat”.

The Palestinians have roundly rejected Trump’s Middle East proposal, which offers them limited self-rule in scattered chunks of territory with a capital on the outskirts of Jerusalem while allowing Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank.

In Gaza, the military said it targeted a Hamas weapons manufacturing site. There were no reports of casualties.

The besieged territory has been relatively calm in recent months as part of an informal truce between its Hamas rulers and Israel, but tension has increased since Trump unveiled his plan. 

The Palestinians, as well as much of the international community, view the settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war – as illegal and a major obstacle to peace.