AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – Zionist settlers attacked Palestinians and hurled stones, chairs and fireworks at them overnight in a tense al-Quds neighborhood where settler groups are trying to evict several Palestinian families, officials said Tuesday.
The threatened evictions fueled protests and clashes in the run-up to last month’s 11-day Gaza war.
Zionist troops said they arrested four Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. One woman was reportedly injured when she was hit in the back by a stone, police said.
The Red Crescent emergency service said its crews treated 20 Palestinians, including 16 suffering from pepper spray and tear gas and others wounded by rubber-coated bullets. Two other people were wounded, including an elderly man who was hit in the head, it said.
The Red Crescent said settlers threw stones at one of its ambulances and Zionist troops sprayed skunk water on a second ambulance belonging to the service.
The eruption of violence is the latest friction in Sheikh Jarrah, where weeks of unrest captured international attention ahead of the 11-day aggression by the Zionist regime on Palestinians in Gaza.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement called for resistance against Zionist occupation to be activated in all its forms and shapes across the occupied West Bank, emphasizing that Palestinians have the inalienable right to defend themselves and protect their dignity, which are being constantly violated by the regime.
“Settlers are perpetrating various acts of terror and aggression against our (Palestinian) nation under the protection of the occupation army. The Israeli military forces are besieging cities, villages as well as camps, and are assaulting our people by means of incursions, arrests and killings at checkpoints,” Tariq Salmi, the movement’s spokesman, said in a press statement on Tuesday.
He called on Palestinian resistance fighters to mount their activities across the occupied West Bank, noting that the occupying regime will not be deterred except by force.
Salami described illegal Zionist settlements as legitimate targets for Palestinians’ resistance operations.
The statement came after Palestinian media outlets reported that Zionist settlers had fatally shot a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces in the northern part of the West Bank.