Israeli soldiers assault Palestinians demonstrating against ethnic cleansing of Nabi Samuil village

JERUSALEM, Israeli occupation forces today assaulted scores of Palestinian protesters who demonstrated at an Israeli military checkpoint near the village of Al-Jib, north of occupied Jerusalem, against Israel’s ongoing displacement of Palestinians in the neighboring village of Nabi Samuil.

Soldiers assaulted the protesters with teargas and pepper gas canisters, causing suffocation cases among the protesters. Mo’ayyad Sha’ban, the Head of the PLO Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, was among the protesters who suffocated as a result of the Israeli teargas.

The Israeli occupation forces prevented the provision of first aid to the wounded at the checkpoint, and forced them to leave the area.

Dozens of Palestinians had performed Friday prayers near the occupation checkpoint at the entrance to the village, before they started a nonviolent demonstration towards the checkpoint in support of the people of the besieged village of Nabi Samuil.

The participants waved Palestinian flags and banners decrying the ethnic cleansing of Nabi Samuil village by the Israeli occupation authorities, calling for an end of Israel’s siege of the village.

Nabi Samuil, also written as an-Nabi Samwil, overlooks occupied Jerusalem on one side and Ramallah on the other. With approximately 300 Palestinian inhabitants, the village is located in the “seam zone” — an area separated from the rest of the occupied West Bank by Israel’s apartheid wall.

The residents of Nabi Samwil are flanked by colonial settlements, the Israeli segregation barrier and an Israeli park that is encroaching onto their land.

The national park comprises an archaeological site, which includes the tomb of the Prophet Samuel, an important religious figure for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. The tomb is surmounted by a mosque which Palestinians can only access on Fridays. It can be closed at any moment to let Israeli settlers access the tomb.

The inhabitants are considered West Bank residents and even though they are on Jerusalem’s side of the wall, they are only allowed to go to the nearest West Bank city, Ramallah, for necessary activities such as buying food or accessing medical care.

Required to submit to a tight regime of permits, everything in their lives is monitored: from the quantity of groceries they bring to the village to the people visiting. Each and every movement of people or products is being controlled by an Israeli “liaison office.”

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency

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