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
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
