Palestinian leading anti-occupation activist Khader Habib survived an Israeli assassination attempt in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday hours after four other activists were killed and several bystanders wounded in a fresh Israeli extra-judicial killing by an air strike, amid reports that Israel has approved the construction of hundreds of new Jewish settler homes in the colonial settlements it built on the West Bank.

Islamic Jihad spokesman, Sheikh Khader Habib, survived an assassination attempt after an Israeli surveillance plane targeted his vehicle in Al Shuja’eyya neighborhood, east of Gaza city. He was lightly injured.

Habib is also well-known merchant in his 40s and was repeatedly detained by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

Hours earlier four Palestinian activists, three members of the Popular Resistance Committees and a member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were killed and several bystanders wounded in a fresh Israeli extra-judicial killing by an air strike in eastern Gaza City.

Israel has killed seven Palestinian activists in air strikes on the Gaza Strip since the December 5 bombing attack that killed four Israelis and the Palestinian bomber at a shopping mall in Israel’s northern coastal city of Netanya.

The latest deaths brought the Palestinian death toll to more than 3,987 since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada (uprising) on September 28, 2000 against the 38-year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officially condemned on Wednesday the killing of the four Palestinians, identified as Husam Abu Nada, Mohammad Joha, Rashad Rahim and Hamdan Mohanna.

Their car was traveling near the Karni crossing, the main cargo passage between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

An unmanned Israeli drone fired two missiles at the car, ripping it apart, witnesses said.

Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah that the air strike was an awful crime against the Palestinian people, which aims at obstructing all efforts to reinforce the Palestinian unilaterally-declared and observed truce.