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Israeli police said Saturday that they were investigating the death of a Palestinian woman in the occupied West Bank after her husband accused Israeli settlers of the death of his wife. She died because, according to her husband, Israeli settlers were pelting stones at her car.
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Aisha Rawbi, 47, was traveling by the illegal Israeli settlements late Friday after dark along the main road near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Aykube Rawbi, 52, her husband was driving the car. “The stones came from the side where the settlement is. I could hear the people speak Hebrew, but I didn’t see them,” Rawbi told Reuters.
Israeli Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: “Police arrived in the area and have opened an investigation.” An Israeli court issued a gag order on details of the inquiry.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement published by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli settlers had perpetrated a "heinous crime that cannot go unpunished."
A footage of the car, which a Reuters cameraman said bore Palestinian license plates, showed what appeared to be a blood-stained broken brick at the foot of the passenger seat, which was covered in shattered glass.
A doctor at the Palestinian hospital where Aisha Rawbi was brought said the 47-year-old was dead on arrival and that she had suffered a head injury. Her relatives said an autopsy was to be carried out.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the Israeli government responsible for Rawbi’s death and asked the international community to "speed up international protection for Palestinians."
Thousands of Palestinians attended her funeral Saturday in the West Bank village of Biddya.
The occupied West Bank is seeing an upsurge of conflict in the past two weeks with two attacks against Israelis. A Palestinian gunman shot dead two Israelis Sunday and wounded a third near a West Bank settlement, while Thursday the Israeli military said a Palestinian had stabbed an Israeli soldier in the area.
On Friday, Israeli forces said they had arrested a Palestinian on suspicion of stabbing and wounding an army reservist on guard duty at a checkpoint south of Nablus the previous day.
This comes as Gaza health officials said Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians Friday in protests along Gaza’s border.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Saturday all fuel deliveries to Gaza will stop and resume only when border violence ends. Israel allowed two trucks of fuel across its border into Gaza on Tuesday in a Qatari- and U.N.-backed effort to ease conditions in the enclave.
According to Palestinian Health Ministry figures, around 200 Palestinians have been killed since the border protests began on March 30, which are dubbed as the Great March of Return in favor of the return of Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their lands when Israel was established in 1948.
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