RAMALLAH,
Friday, November 26, 2021 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Friday afternoon suppressed
an anti-land-pillage rally in Beita town, south of
the West Bank city of Nablus, injuring a journalist and causing others to
suffocate, according to medical sources.
Israeli
forces used fatal violence to disperse a rally called for to protest the
construction of the new colonial settlement of Givat Eviatar atop Jabal Sabih (Sabih Mountain), near Beita, 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, causing dozens to suffocate.
Director
of the Palestinian Red Crescent's (PRC) Emergency Department in Nablus, Ahmad Jibril, said that one Palestine TV reporter, Baker Abdul-Haq, was injured by a rubber-coated steel bullet in his
shoulder and three other journalists suffocate from tear gas inhalation as they
were covering the event.
Palestinians
across Historic Palestine have been rising up against decades of Israeli
settler- colonialism and apartheid. The villagers of Beita
have not only been protesting decades of Israeli oppression, but also
intensified Israeli land pillage of their land.
In
almost a month, five Palestinians from the town were killed and over 618 others
were injured while trying to oust the colonial settler outpost built atop Mount
Sabih or Sbeih.
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.