NABLUS, Friday, February 18, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli forces dawn Friday cracked down on an anti-settlement protest in Beita town, south of Nablus, injuring 23 Palestinians, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that Israeli forces violently attacked Palestinians who gathered atop Jabal Sabih (Sabih Mountain), near the town, in the early morning hours to confront settlers who planned to reach the hill to rebuild the evacuated colonial settlement outpost of Givat Eviatar.
The heavily-armed soldiers opened fire at the villagers who barricaded themselves at the site, causing 16 to suffer the effects of tear gas inhalation, hitting another with rubber-coated steel bullets and another with a tear gas canister.
They also chased protestors determined to confront the settler intrusion, causing five to sustain injuries due to falling from high places.
Two out of the five who fell from high places were rushed to a hospital for treatment, while all other casualties were treated at the scene.
The Israeli military gearing up for a possible anti-settlement protest at the flashpoint site, deploying reinforcements and using bulldozers to block off all roads to the site with earth mounds, obstructing medical crew from reaching the confrontation site to evacuate casualties.
Palestinians across in the territories occupied since 1967 and the rest of 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, some eight Palestinians from the town were killed and over 620 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.
