Israel to increase security on West Bank border with Jordan, Netanyahu says

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will beef up security along the West Bank’s border with Jordan after a deadly attack this week.

Three Israeli civilians were killed Sunday when a Jordanian truck driver who had entered the West Bank through a major crossing opened fire.

Visiting on Wednesday, Netanyahu called the area a “border of peace” and said Israel was cooperating with Jordan to maintain quiet.

Netanyahu says terrorists have stepped up efforts to smuggle weapons from Jordan into the territory, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

“We will work here to construct a stronger barrier against smuggling attempts,” he said, saying all work will be coordinated with Jordan.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement 30 years ago. The countries maintain good security ties, though diplomatic relations have been strained by Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden said he is “outraged and deeply saddened” by the death of an American activist who was shot by Israeli forces while protesting settlements in the West Bank, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released early on Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle, was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, and that it had launched a criminal investigation.

Elsewhere, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that “this has been a very painful and difficult morning for the people of Israel” because of an attack in the West Bank and a helicopter crash in Gaza.

Speaking in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, Herzog described Wednesday’s attack as a “horrific, criminal terror attack” and expressed “sorrow for the pain it has inflicted.” He did not elaborate but was apparently referring to the incident when a fuel tanker crashed into a West Bank bus stop, seriously injuring one person. Israeli officials said it was an attack.

The Israeli military said the driver was “neutralized” at the scene. It did not immediately identify the driver. Violence in the West Bank has escalated since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Herzog also said at a joint news conference with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic that “my heart also goes out to the fighters who were killed last night in a helicopter crash in Gaza and I wish those wounded a full and swift recovery.”

The Israeli military said that two Israeli soldiers died and seven were injured when their helicopter crashed in the southern Gaza Strip overnight in a non-combat-related incident.

The military said Wednesday that the helicopter was on a mission to evacuate wounded soldiers for treatment in Israeli hospitals.

There have been 340 Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operation began in late October, at least 50 of whom have been killed in accidents within Gaza.

Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight and Wednesday hit a U.N. school sheltering displaced Palestinian families, killing at least 34 people. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas terrorists planning attacks from inside the school.

The military on Wednesday also said it launched assaults around the West Bank town of Tulkarem and in two northern towns. It said it dismantled an explosives lab, a weapons manufacturing workshop and an explosives-rigged vehicle.