WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Thousands of Palestinian Bedouins demonstrated in the city of Bir Saba’ in southern parts of the Israeli-occupied territories against the occupying regime’s policies of demolition and uprooting Palestinian villages in the Negev.
Protesters gathered around the Israeli Bedouin Settlement Authority in Beersheba (Bir Saba’) as part of a general strike organized to protest the Zionist regime’s demolition policy in the city.
Approximately 15,000 people participated in the protest making it one of the largest demonstrations witnessed in the Negev in recent years. Demonstrators from various Arab villages and towns joined the protest expressing united popular anger and a firm rejection of the policies of demolition, uprooting, and displacement.
Demonstrators raised black flags and held banners bearing slogans opposing the racist policies targeting the Palestinian presence in the Negev.
The demonstrators also chanted slogans rejecting the demolitions carried out by the Israeli occupation authorities, represented by the Bedouin Settlement Authority, against Palestinian villages and towns, under the pretext of unlicensed construction.
In another development, illegal Zionist settlers on Friday set fire to Palestinian olive fields north of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank, while establishing a new settlement outpost to the east, according to local media.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that illegal Israeli settlers set fire to olive groves in the Ras al-Deir area near Sinjil, with the extent of the damage being assessed.
Simultaneously, illegal Israeli settlers erected a tent approximately 500 meters from homes in al-Mughayir village, the first step toward establishing an illegal settlement outpost in the al-Qale’ area.
In related violence, Zionist troops raided al-Lubban al-Sharqiya village south of Nablus, firing live ammunition and tear gas shells that left scores of Palestinians suffering from suffocation.
According to local sources, soldiers forced shop closures and attacked civilians during the incursion.
In recent days, settler violence in the West Bank has escalated, with coordinated attacks on Palestinian vehicles, homes, and agricultural lands.
According to Palestinian figures, illegal Israeli settlers carried out 341 attacks on Palestinians and their properties in the West Bank last month.
Since the start of the Zionist regime’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, at least 970 Palestinians have been killed and more than 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers across the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.