NABLUS, Israeli forces today cracked down on an anti-land-pillage protests in Beita and Beit Dajan towns, south and east of Nablus, injuring over 60 Palestinians, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that Israeli forces violently dispersed Palestinians who continued to converge atop Jabal Sabih (Sabih Mountain), near the town, 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, causing 43 to suffer the effects of tear gas inhalation and causing six others to sustain injuries due to falling from high places.
Meanwhile, the soldiers attacked the participants of the rally called for to defend Palestinian-owned land threatened with confiscation, east of Beit Dajan, to make room for Israeli colonial settlement construction, hitting two by rubber-coated steel bullets and causing 14 others to suffocate from tear gas inhalation.
Two journalists were among the five rubber-coated steel bullet injuries.
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.”
Source: Palestine News & Info Agency