HEBRON, Dozens suffocated as Israeli forces Friday afternoon suppressed an anti-land-theft rally in Masafer Yatta, south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, according to a local activist.
Tens of Palestinian activists, including land owners, marched toward the land stolen by the settlers in al-Juwaya, al-Mirtabah and Ein al-Baidah hamlets. Participants were planting different kinds of trees when Israeli forces violently attacked them.
Rateb al-Jbour said that Israeli forces declared the hamlets a closed military zone, blocking access to them before violently quelling the rally against settler violence and land theft, beating the participants with riffles butts and showering them as well as dwellings in the area with tear gas canisters.
He added that the soldiers seized some 100 olive saplings.
Dozens of participants suffered tear gas inhalation as a result.
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 800,000 and colonial settlement expansion has tripled since the signing of the 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.”
Source: Palestine News & Info Agency