RABA, Occupied West Bank: Palestinians and the Israeli army clashed on Friday during a march in a village in the northern occupied West Bank against a newly established Israeli settlement outpost.
“We came to this area to express our protest and say: ‘this land is ours, not yours’,” Ghassan Bazour, head of Raba’s village council, told AFP.
While all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, only outposts such as the one established overnight in Raba are also prohibited under Israeli law.
An AFP journalist at the scene reported that a group of men holding Palestinian flags and those of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party walked from Raba toward a nearby hill on top of which settlers had established the outpost.
After conducting the Muslim Friday prayer at the base of the hill, people continued toward the outpost, until Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, the journalist said.
The army did not respond to an AFP request for comment on Friday’s events in Raba.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that its teams had provided support to 13 people suffering from tear gas inhalation.
Village council chief Bazour said that settlers had originally taken over the hill’s high ground to establish an outpost and deny Palestinians access to nearby agricultural lands.
“There is now a settler outpost here (which) will continue to devour the land and empty these areas,” Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, told AFP.
Despite it being dispersed by the army, Shaaban was enthusiastic about Friday’s march, given that violence in recent years has made all protests against settlers dangerous for Palestinians.
“This model of resistance must be applied throughout the West Bank. I call for massive marches... to stop this aggression, this terrorism,” he said.
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack of October 2023 triggered the Gaza war.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 956 Palestinians, including many militants, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.
Clashes at West Bank march against settler outpost
https://arab.news/wed9h
Clashes at West Bank march against settler outpost
- Protesters march toward illegal settler outpost in Palestinian village of Raba
Israel reopens West Bank-Jordan crossing for Gaza aid
- Israel closed the Allenby crossing to aid destined for the Gaza strip in September
- Palestinian official says 96 trucks carrying cement meterials were allowed to pass through on Tuesday
JERUSALEM: Israel reopened the only crossing on the border it controls between Jordan and the occupied West Bank on Wednesday to aid trucks for Gaza after nearly three months of closure, Israeli and Palestinian officials told AFP.
Israel closed the crossing after a Jordanian truck driver shot dead an Israeli soldier and a reserve officer at the border in September.
The crossing in the Jordan Valley reopened to travelers a few days later, but not to humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by more than two years of war.
“The Allenby crossing was open today and trucks are going from the Allenby crossing to Gaza,” said a spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian Territories.
A Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that the crossing had been opened.
On Tuesday 96 trucks carrying materials for the production of cement were allowed to pass through the crossing, the official said.
On Wednesday a further 20 trucks of humanitarian aid entered, and on Thursday sand was expected to be allowed in for the construction sector, the official added.
Since the crossing’s closure, Jordan said it had been able to send some aid to Gaza via the Sheikh Hussein crossing, located north of the occupied West Bank.
On Tuesday, an Israeli official said the transfer of goods and aid from Jordan through Allenby was about to resume after a government directive.
“All aid trucks destined for the Gaza Strip will proceed under escort and security, following a thorough security inspection,” the official said.
The Allenby crossing is the only international gateway for Palestinians from the West Bank that does not require entering Israel, which has occupied the territory since 1967.
