The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement that its crews treated 15 injuries during clashes that broke out between the army and participants in the town of Beit Lid, east of Tulkarm, explaining that among the injured was one person with live ammunition, another with rubber-coated metal bullets, and 12 with cases of suffocation.
Eyewitnesses confirmed that Israeli occupation forces fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse participants in a protest organized on the lands of the towns of Beit Lid and Kafr Qaddum, east of Tulkarm, and pursued activists and supporters in the adjacent agricultural fields after performing Friday prayers at a site near the newly established settlement outpost.
The Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, the municipalities of Kafr Qaddum and Beit Lid, the Fatah movement, and the popular resistance factions and committees had called for Friday prayers to be held on the lands of the “Al-Duweir” area in Beit Lid in rejection of settlers’ attempt to establish a new settlement outpost on the lands of the neighboring Kafr Qaddum.
In a related context, Palestinian activists documented a group of settlers breaking olive trees in the Susya area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron. A video seen by Anadolu Agency showed a group of settlers attacking the trees.
These attacks come as part of a broad Israeli escalation in the occupied West Bank by the army and settlers, which began in conjunction with the war of extermination launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip on October 8, 2023.
These attacks in the West Bank have so far resulted in the martyrdom of 1,068 Palestinians and the injury of about 10,000 others, in addition to the arrest of more than 20,000 Palestinians, including 1,600 children. Meanwhile, the two-year war of extermination in Gaza, which ended with a ceasefire agreement last October, left about 69,000 martyrs and more than 170,000 wounded.
