NEGEV (Dispatches) – Zionist regime authorities have arrested dozens of Palestinians in the Negev region, south of the occupied territories, as protests continue against forestation plans by the occupying regime.
In the early hours of Tuesday, Zionist troops stormed the towns and villages of al-Zarnouq, Abu Talool, Khashm al-Zina, and Tel al-Sabe, detaining almost 41 Palestinians, the youngest of whom is only 10 years old.
Local media reported that those arrested by the troops on Tuesday were accused of being involved in the protests against the plan to plant trees in the Negev, which Palestinians see as a project to uproot them from their land.
Last week, Palestinians in Negev faced off with Zionist troops and workers. The Palestinians were tilling their lands and crops in al-Atrash and Saawa villages, one of the six Palestinian villages in al-Naqe area.
Since then protests have continued to flare in the Negev, along with solidarity protests by Palestinians in the cities of Haifa, Umm al-Fahm and Nazareth.
A rights group urged the Zionist regime to stop its life-threatening crackdown on protest rallies in the Negev desert, as the Palestinian residents of the region, including children, who face forced eviction by the occupying regime.
In a statement, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Palestine (Adalah) said it had sent a letter to Zionist regime officials, demanding that they immediately order occupation troops to halt the use of violent, illegal, and life-threatening means to disperse rallies and to allow protests to continue.
According to the statement, carried by Palestine’s official Wafa news agency on Monday, the letter was sent last week to three Zionist commanders, including the one in charge of the Negev region, and the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit.
Meanwhile, an Israeli committee has advanced a plan for the construction of 1,465 settler units in occupied Al-Quds, the latest move aimed to erase the so-called Green Line that separates territories occupied by the Zionist regime before 1967 from those it occupied after that year.
According to the plan, half of the approved units would be built between the settlements of Givat Hamatos and Abu Ghneim, and the rest would be in the occupied East Al-Quds.
After the so-called District Planning and Building Committee approved the plan, it has been advanced to the “deposit” stage. More approvals are still required before the execution of the plan.
The Israeli rights group Peace Now decried the project, saying the planned units would “prevent territorial contiguity” between Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Al-Quds and the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
“This is another way in which Israel is erasing the Green Line in Jerusalem (Al-Quds), ending Palestinian contiguity, and expropriating the lands of Palestinians,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the left-wing Ir Amim NGO.