By Michael Hernandez with additional reporting from Anees Barghouty in Ramallah
WASHINGTON
A Palestinian teen shot last Friday was not a terrorist, the State Department said Monday.
Arrawa Hammad, 14, was shot in the head with live ammunition by an Israeli sniper during clashes in Silwad village near Ramallah, Ahmed al-Beitawi, the director of the Ramallah Medical Center, told The Anadolu Agency.
The Israel Defense Forces said that the teen was about to throw a firebomb at a highway when he was shot.
Asked if she thought Hammad, who was an American citizen, was a terrorist, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that she doesn’t, but didn’t have additional details on the circumstances of his death.
Psaki’s comments follow her call last week for a “speedy” and “transparent” investigation into the West Bank shooting.
“Obviously, we put out the statement because obviously it’s a tragedy when a young teenager is killed. But there’s an investigation that will go on that’s not led by us. We’ll wait to see how that proceeds,” she told reporters Monday.
Tensions within Israel and the Palestinian territories have recently due to plans to increase settlement construction in the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of their future state.
Earlier Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu was reported to have approved a plan to build 1,060 new Jewish-only settlements in East Jerusalem. Both neighborhoods are in East Jerusalem.
The Ramot Shlomo settlement was built on the Palestinian neighborhood of Shuafat, while Har Homa was built on the neighborhood of Jabal Abu Ghneim.
Israeli daily Haaretz quoted unnamed officials in Netanyahu's office as saying that 660 of these units would be built in the northern neighborhood of Ramot Shlomo, and another 400 in Har Homa in the south.
Increased settlement building is incompatible with a two-state solution, Psaki said.
“Israel’s leaders have said they would support a pathway to a two-state solution, but moving forward with this type of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace,” she said. “And that is certainly a message that we are conveying directly.”
International law considers the West Bank and East Jerusalem occupied territories taken by Israel in 1967, viewing all Jewish settlement building as illegitimate.
www.aa.com.tr/en
