Israel Police Special Operations Unit. (photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE)
Hamas spokesmen on Thursday lashed out at security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority after Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian who allegedly was involved in a drive-by shooting attack last week that claimed the life of a rabbi.
Late Wednesday evening, in a firefight in Jenin in the northern West Bank, Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian suspected of being involved in the shooting of Rabbi Razviel Shevach in the Nablus area, the Border Police said.
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Hamas Spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said in a statement posted on Facebook, that the incident "could not have happened without information sharing and damned security coordination,” adding that security relationship between Israel and the PA should “be ended.”
Neither the PA nor Israel has said that they worked together in pursuing suspects behind Shevach’s death. However, the PA security forces and Israel are known to cooperate in the West Bank to prevent attacks against Israelis.
Last weekend, a Palestinian security official told The Jerusalem Post that the PA security forces “are constantly trying to prevent attacks like the one that took place in the Nablus area.”
Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri also slammed security cooperation, referring to it as “criminal.”
“The criminal role of security cooperation will not succeed in preventing the resistance from confronting Trump’s decisions and protecting Jerusalem,” he tweeted on Thursday, alluding to US President Donald Trump’s decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and initiate the relocation of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the city.
Hamas has long called on the PA to end security coordination with Israel.
Most Palestinians want security coordination to be halted, according to a 2015 poll conducted at the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at an-Najah University in Nablus.