ISRAELI troops killed a man in the occupied West Bank today, as the current surge in violence continued.

The latest bloodshed brought the number of Palestinian lives lost this year to 35.

The Palestinian Health Ministry named the vicitim as Nassim Abu Fouda and said that he had been shot in Hebron, a target of near-daily Israeli military raids against the city’s Palestinian residents.

Violence has spiked in recent days, with an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin last week, killing nine Palestinians and a Palestinian gun attack in an east Jerusalem Jewish settlement leaving seven Israelis dead.

Israel has approved a series of punitive steps against Palestinians, including against the families of anyone alleged to have carried out attacks on Israelis.

The violence follows months of Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank, which were launched after a wave of Palestinians attacks on Israelis in the spring of last year that killed 19 people.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, making it the deadliest year in those territories since 2004, according to figures from Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Another 10 Israelis were killed later last year, raising the the year’s Israeli death toll to 29.

The bloodshed has spiked this month, during the first weeks of Israel’s new far-right government, which has promised to take a tough stance against the Palestinians and increase settlement construction.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in the region today on a visit planned before the latest spike in violence.

The US administration reportedly has differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, but it seems unlikely that there will be any easing of US support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the brutal methods used to enforce it.