By Neelam Rahim 

Concerning the bus shooting that occurred near Masjidul-Aqsa. Hafez Ebrahim said the incident happened in the early hours of Sunday morning when a Palestinian had opened up fire on an Israeli Jewish settler bus. Many Jewish settlers were wounded, some very critically.

According to the bus driver of that particular vehicle, the gunman entered the bus and started shooting at the bus. Several people inside and outside the bus were targeted in this specific incident.

Hafez Ebrahim says this has come barely a week after the Israeli assault on the Gaza strip. Straight after the operation, the Israeli occupation army carried out search operations in Palestinian villages near Masjidul-Aqsa.

After a six-hour search, a 26-year-old Palestinian from Al Quds handed himself into the Israeli army. Little is known about the man, but he is identified as Amir Sidawi. As per the report, he is not affiliated with any Palestinian group.

According to Hafez Ebrahim, events in one part of Palestine could and naturally would enrage Palestinians in other parts of Palestine against the occupation. There’s I’d an additional factor that Sidawi lives in the neighbourhood of Sirwan, far from the happenings in Gaza or any other part of Palestine but also targeted daily by the Israeli occupation, Jewish extremists and so forth. Many houses in Sirwan are threatened to be demolished and destroyed in recent years, which could motivate the attack.

He says it’s unusual that a Palestinian would hand himself into the Israeli Police the way Sidawi has done. Analysts say that if he was behind this attack, he might have handed himself over because he has tried to prevent more Israeli retaliations against his neighbourhood of Sirwan yet and to spare his fellow residents this kind of indignity and violence.

Meanwhile, Hafez Ebrahim says the controversial author Salmaan Rushdie was the subject of an attack on Friday that left him in a critical condition.

The response and comment that has come out from the State of Israel itself show the close link between the Islamaphobia industry and Zionism, said Hafez Ebrahim.

Last Tuesday, Israeli troops killed three Palestinians, including the senior resistance fighter known as the Lion of Nablus, Ebrahim Al-Nablus. This Israeli raid targeted a home in the West Bank City of Nablus.

According to Hafez Ebrahim, Al-Nablus was one of the men the Israeli army considered most wanted, and he was the target of this particular assault along with other Palestinian fighters in the exchanges of fire that occurred.

Listen to the entire Palestine Report on Radio Islam’s podcast below.