RAMALLAH, August 28, 2015 (WAFA) – A Palestinian journalist was shot and injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet, while another was arrested during clashes that erupted in Ramallah’s village of Bil'in between Palestinian locals and Israeli army, as the latter suppressed the weekly and peaceful anti-wall demonstration.

The popular committee against the separation wall in the village said that journalist Mohammed Basman Yasin was hit with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the foot, while he was covering the event.

Israeli forces also arrested another journalist identified as Hamza Yasin. Head of the popular committee, Iyad Birnat, was also arrested.

Meanwhile, forces suppressed another peaceful demonstration organized in the village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, to protest against Palestinian land confiscation to expand the nearby Jewish Hallamish settlement, shooting and injuring a child with a rubber-coated bullet in the foot, and causing many others to suffocate due to inhaling tear gas fired at them by the Israeli soldiers.

Many others sustained light injuries after being hit with rubber-coated bullets. They were all treated at the scene.

The soldiers further arrested local Mahmoud al-Tamimi, and an Italian activist.

The popular committee movement in Nabi Saleh said that soldiers attempted to nab a child, who sustained fractures in his arm during an Israeli army’ raid on the village two days ago; forces reportedly beat him up along with other locals. The child was identified as Mohammed Bassim.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO’s) Department of cultural and Information stated in an April 2015 statement that “It is becoming increasingly risky to cover clashes and protests between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters in the West Bank as the number of journalists injured, in what appears to be deliberate targeting by Israeli security forces, continues to rise.”

It said that during the last 12 months, Israel’s Foreign Press Association (FPA) has issued numerous protests at the manhandling, harassment and shooting of both members of the foreign media and Palestinian journalists.

“The Foreign Press calls on the Israeli border police (a paramilitary unit) to put an immediate end to a wave of attacks on journalists. In just over a week, border police officers have carried out at least four attacks on journalists working for international media organizations, injuring reporters and damaging expensive equipment. These attacks all appear to have been unprovoked,” was one of many statements released by the FPA last year.

The PLO department said that, “Tear gas canisters, which under Israeli law are meant to be shot from a safe distance in an upward arch so as not to endanger life, have also been shot directly at journalists from close range even when the journalists were out of the line of fire.”

“Palestinian journalists and cameramen working for foreign agencies and local media appear to be bearing the brunt of these attacks, because assaulting and abusing Palestinians, males in particular, is an integral part of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land,” it stressed.

“We are very concerned about the marked increase in the number of Palestinian journalists being deliberately targeted by the Israeli security forces,” said Reporters Without Borders in a statement on the increase in violence by Israeli security forces against Palestinian journalists released last year.

“We reiterate our call to the Israeli authorities, especially the military, to respect the physical integrity of journalists covering demonstrations and we remind them that the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on 28 March recognizing the importance of media coverage of protests and condemning any attacks or violence against the journalists covering them,” said Reporters without Borders.

Around 17 journalists were killed and 30 others were wounded during the third Israeli offensive on Gaza in the summer of 2014. Homes of journalists and several media outlets were also targeted and destroyed.

T.R.