RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – Dozens of Palestinians were injured on Friday as Zionist troops fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas shells to disperse rallies in different areas of the occupied West Bank.
In a statement, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said medical teams treated at least 23 Palestinians in protests held in Nablus.
In the town of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, the statement said the medical staff treated seven persons injured by bullets.
In the village of Beita, east of the same city, an elderly Palestinian was wounded by rubber bullets during confrontation with the occupying army, and another 15 suffered from tear gas inhalation.
Palestinians hold demonstrations on a weekly basis against illegal settlements in different parts of the West Bank, especially in Beita, Beit Dajan, and Kafr Qaddoum villages.
Meanwhile, Zionist regime authorities have started turning a farmland and a nature reserve area into a new settlement in the occupied Jordan Valley, the latest in the regime’s land theft policies despite international outcry.
Mutaz Bisharat, a local Palestinian official who monitors the occupying regime’s settlement expansion, said settlers on Thursday began to set up tents and sheds in the Bayyoud area, 400 meters east of Ein al-Hilweh community in the northern Jordan Valley.
The placement of such structures on this tract of land, which was declared as a nature reserve few years ago, is a prelude to building a new settlement in the area, he added.
Separately, Zionist regime authorities dismantled and razed an agricultural structure in Jordan Valley’s Kardala village northeast of Tubas, the Palestinian media reported.
Mohammad Qabaha, a local resident, confirmed that Zionist troops forced their way into the village and seized a 600-square-meter structure, which served as a vegetable packaging facility.
Regime authorities usually demolish Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, claiming that the structures have been built without permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain. They also sometimes order Palestinian owners to demolish their own homes or pay the demolition costs to the municipality if they do not.
In the fertile Jordan Valley, which makes up some 30 percent of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian residents outnumber Zionist settlers to a great extent. However, the Tel Aviv regime considers the region crucial to its security and has pledged to annex it.
Since 1967, when the regime occupied the West Bank, it has sent thousands of settlers to the Jordan Valley. Some of the settlements in which they live were built almost entirely on private Palestinian land.
Back in March 2019, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a report that the regime had occupied more than 85 percent or 27,000 square kilometers of historical territories of Palestine in an expropriation process.
According to the report, Palestinians now live on and own only 15 percent of their ancestral land.
The Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley regularly face evacuations due to the occupying regime’s military exercises in the region.
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned the regime’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.