News / Palestine

Supporting intruding settlers, Israeli forces shoot, injure three Palestinians in West Bank

Monday, 03 January 2022 7:05 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 03 January 2022 7:12 PM ]

The file photo by Palestinian media shows Israeli soldiers during a night raid in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces have shot and injured three Palestinians during clashes involving local residents and settlers in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian media reported that the Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians in the village of Burqa on Monday.

The regime's troops also used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the Palestinians who had gathered against an intrusion by settlers into their hometown.

The confrontation turned violent after Israeli forces intervened to protect the settlers.

Ghassan Daghlas, an activist who monitors Israeli violations in the region, said the settlers had sneaked into the village from the nearby settlement of Homesh.

Burqa and its surroundings have witnessed a considerable number of vandalism incidents involving Israeli settlers over the past few weeks.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem documented hundreds of such assaults last year. But Israeli authorities rarely prosecute the settler assaults on Palestinians and their property and the vast majority of the files are closed due to deliberate police failure to investigate properly.

Israeli settler violence includes property and mosque arson attacks, stone throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees etc.

Pres. spox: Palestinians will not allow settlers attacks to continue, can defend their rights

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the rising violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank needs to be stopped.

In Bethlehem, Israeli settlers raze Palestinian land to build road

Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers, heavily guarded by soldiers, razed Palestinian land in the village of Khader, located in western Bethlehem, for the construction of a bypass road for the settlers. Hassan Breijah, an anti-settlement activist, said Israelis escorted by troops from Sidi Boaz settlement started leveling the villagers’ land for the construction.

Much of the international community regards the Israeli settler units in the occupied lands as illegal. More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds. All the settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.

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