The attack took place the day after a deadly raid in which the Israeli army killed six Palestinians in Jenin.
The gas station borders Route 60, shared by Palestinians and Israeli settlers, in the vicinity of the Eli settlement in the center of the occupied West Bank. The two Palestinian assailants arrived mid-afternoon on Tuesday, June 20, and first opened fire in a restaurant, killing three people. They came out and shot a fourth customer who was refueling. One of the victims was 17 years old. An Israeli civilian witnessing the scene fired several shots at one of the Palestinians, who eventually collapsed. The second fled before being killed by the Israeli army two hours later in Tubas, a little further north. Four Israelis were also wounded in the attack.
The attackers, who had met in Israeli prisons, were both members of the armed wing of Hamas. The Palestinian Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip hailed the attack as “a response to the occupation’s crimes in the Jenin refugee camp yesterday”, said its spokesman, Hazem Qassem.
The day before, the army had carried out a bloody raid in this northern West Bank town, home to an armed Palestinian resistance that thrives on regular incursions by the Israeli military. In unusually violent fighting, Israeli soldiers fired missiles from a helicopter, reverting to methods not used in the West Bank since the second Intifada. Seven Palestinians were killed, over 90 wounded and eight Israeli soldiers killed.
On Tuesday evening, a few hours after the gas station attack, hundreds of Israeli settlers invaded several Palestinian localities, blocking roads, burning vehicles and attacking homes and shops. In Huwara, south of Nablus, around 20 settlers set fire to several cars, reviving memories of a previous violent punitive expedition in February, when a Palestinian was killed. In the village of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, close to the gas station, columns of glowing smoke also rose from the burnt fields.