Ramallah: IOF Wounds 15 Palestinian Demonstrators

IOF Wounds 15 Palestinian Demonstrators, Continues Apartheid Wall Construction

RAMALLAH, Palestine - - The Israeli occupying forces shot and wounded at least 15 Palestinian citizens during an anti-Apartheid Wall demonstration in the Ramallan And ElBireh governorate, eyewitnesses mentioned.

The Israeli soldiers responded to a demonstration organized by the villagers of Deir Qaddis, west of Ramallah and ElBireh governorate, and international peace activists, using heavy gunfire and tear gas canisters, wounding at least 15 citizens.

Medical sources in Ramallah City said that the wounded suffered live and rubber-coated bullet wounds as well as suffocations due to inhaling the tear gas.

The villagers of Deir Qaddis confronted the soldiers, who were guarding a group of Israeli contractors taking measurements on the village lands, prior to constructing a section of the Apartheid Wall through it. Mr. Sa'ed Nasr, spokesman of the Popular Committee to Resist the Apartheid Wall (PCRAW), said that the Israeli soldiers brutally attacked the peaceful demonstrators using excessive force, causing a number of them to sustain moderate injuries.

The organizers of the demonstration have also organized a sit-in on the expropriated lands of the village, shouting national slogans calling to end the Israeli occupation and ceasing construction of the Wall. The villagers insisted that they will continue to resist the Israeli schemes to expropriate their village's most fertile lands, and would defend their lands with their lives.

Elsewhere, the Israeli occupying forces escalated its arbitrary measures against the Palestinian citizens moving between the Ramallah and ElBireh governorate and the northern West Bank cities, by deploying large numbers of troops and placing many roadblocks and checkpoints.

WAFA news agency reported that the Israeli soldiers stopped hundreds of Palestinian cars, trucks and buses, ordering the passengers to step outside and checked their ID cards, often forcing them to wait several hours before allowing them to pass.

The Israeli soldiers' cruel behavior peaked at the Za'tara military checkpoint, Central West Bank, in which they forced many residents of Nablus City to go back from where they came, having no mercy on anyone even the sick ones. Eyewitnesses mentioned that the column of cars waiting to allowed through extended over 12 kilometers from the checkpoint.

And as usual, the Israeli soldiers manning the infamous Al Hamra checkpoint disrupted the movement of Palestinian citizens and their vehicles from and to the Jordan Valley area, forcing hundreds of Palestinian citizens to wait for several hours, according to eyewitness accounts.

In the occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli soldiers assaulted today afternoon the Palestinian schoolchildren while they were leaving their schools to their homes in East Jerusalem, eyewitnesses said.

The witnesses added that the soldiers chased several schoolchildren and severely beat them with their rifles' butts, after they complained of the concrete slabs the occupying authorities placed to separate the main street in the holy city. They added that the occupying troops fired several tear gas canisters at the students as they were going back to their homes in the Al Barid suburb of Jerusalem.

In the same area, the Israeli occupying authorities imposed a strict closure on the Al Barid suburb in East Jerusalem, as Israeli bulldozers began working on the section of the "Jerusalem Envelope" that would bisect the holy city and separate the Palestinian residents from their livelihood.

Confronting such a grave move, the PCRAW declared a series of activities to protest the construction of the wall in this suburb, and called on the Palestinian citizens and residents of the area to join these activities and become aware of the Israeli colonial plots.

Mr. Sarhan Al Salayma, head of the PCRAW and chairman of the Al Ram local council, told IPC over the phone that the Israeli soldiers have placed large concrete slabs three-meters high all along the main road leading to the Al Barid suburb.

Al Salayma pointed out that the relative bodies in the area have sensed this dangerous move and called to an immediate meeting to coordinate the reaction it, asserting that the residents of the affected areas (Al Barid Suburb, Al Ram Town, Kufor Aqqab, Qalandia and Samiramis), who are also in holding a Jerusalem ID card, would never abandon their homes in East Jerusalem and would fight to retain their homes and identities.

"All the sectors of life in northern Jerusalem will be affected by this wall, mainly the educational and economical sectors," Al Salayma warned.

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