NABLUS,
Thursday, July 29, 2021 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Wednesday evening quelled an
anti-settlement rally in Beita town, south of Nablus,
injuring eight protestors and causing dozens of suffocation cases, according to
medical sources.
Ahmad
Jibril, the head of the Emergency and Ambulance
Department at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), said that Israeli
forces opened fire towards the participants in the rally called for to protest
the construction of a new colonial settlement atop Jabal
Sbeih (Sbeih Mountain) near
the town, hitting eight by rubber-coated steel bullets and causing dozens
others to suffocate from tear gas.
He
added that another protestor sustained bruises after being brutally beaten by
the soldiers.
This
came a day after Israeli forces gunned down a 41-year-old Shadi
Omar Lotfi Salim, 41, near
the entrance of the town, who went to open the water main supplying water to
the town.
The
residents of Beita and the surrounding villages have
been holding weekly Friday rallies to protest the construction of the new
colonial settlement of Givat Eviatar
atop Jabal Sabih as well as
the seizure of lands belonging to the villagers of Beita,
Huwarra, and Za‘tara to
inaugurate a new settler-only bypass road.
In
addition to Mount Sabih, Israeli forces have erected
another colonial settlement outpost atop Mount Al-Arma,
north of Beita, a few months ago, as both mounts
enjoy a strategic location as they overlook the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip
of land running west along the Jordan River which makes up approximately 30% of the West Bank.
Seizing
the two hilltops represents a panoptical defensive tool as they would grant the
Israeli occupation with a panoramic view over the Jordan Valley and the whole
district of Nablus. This is why the Israeli occupation authorities have
assigned them a place in its settlement expansion project.
The
construction of the two colonial outposts atop Mount Sabih,
south of Beita, and Mount Al-Arma,
north of the town, besides to a bypass road to the west is an Israeli measure
to push Palestinian villages and towns into crowded enclaves, ghettos,
surrounded by walls, settlements and military installations, and disrupt their
geographic contiguity with other parts of the West Bank.
The
number of settlers living in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied
East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law has jumped
to over 700,000 and colonial settlement expansion has tripled since the signing
of Oslo Accords in 1993.
Israel’s
nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states
that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a “national
interest.”
K.F.