Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Palestinian. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn Palestinian. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng

Thứ Tư, 3 tháng 4, 2013

Palestinian youth shot to death as West Bank seethes

By Ali Sawafta and Allyn Fisher-Ilan

RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian youth in the West Bank, a Palestinian medic said, as confrontations went into a third day after the death of a prisoner held by Israel provoked street clashes and rocket fire.

Medical staff said troops brought the body of 17-year-old Amer Nassar from the village of Anabta to a hospital near Tulkarm, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army said troops fired on Palestinians who threw fire bombs at a guard post in the area after dark on Wednesday, but did not confirm the teenager was killed by them. It appeared to be the first violent death since trouble began on Tuesday.

With new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry due to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah next week in hope of seeing progress toward peace negotiations, Tuesday's death in prison from cancer of 64-year-old Palestinian Maysara Abu Hamdeya has stirred widespread anger among Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Abu Hamdeya was serving a life term for a planned attack on a Jerusalem cafe in 2002.

In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, where Abu Hamdeya is to be buried on Thursday, Israeli forces clashed with dozens of Palestinian protesters on Wednesday, firing teargas and rubber bullets at men throwing stones and petrol bombs.

Israeli jets carried out their first air strike on the Gaza Strip since a truce ended several days of fighting in November.

The military said it was responding to rockets fired on Tuesday by an Islamist group. The group fired two more rockets on Wednesday and said it was responding to the death of Abu Hamdeya.

Palestinians say he had been denied proper medical care. Israel has denied negligence in Abu Hamdeya's treatment.

Israeli officials pressed Gaza's ruling Islamist movement, Hamas, to rein in the rocket-firing militants after the most serious outbreak of cross-border hostilities since the ceasefire that ended the eight-day war in November.

Some 4,600 Palestinian prisoners declared a hunger strike for three days in protest at Abu Hamdeya's death. Food trays were returned untouched on Wednesday, an Israeli prisons official said. In West Bank towns, some shops were shuttered in solidarity.

GAZA LULL

The Gaza frontier fell quiet by evening and Israel and Hamas appeared to be weighing carefully their next moves. Relative calm for four months has enabled Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild and Israelis near the border to live without sirens and rockets.

Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel in a morning attack on Wednesday, causing no casualties, the Israeli military said. Hours earlier, its planes had targeted "two extensive terror sites" in the north of the territory.

Israel launched the air strike after three rockets landed on Tuesday. An al Qaeda-linked group, Magles Shoura al-Mujahadeen, claimed responsibility for the attacks on both days.

Tuesday was the third time since the November truce that rockets from Gaza struck southern Israel. But with a new government and defense minister in place after weeks of coalition-building since a January election, Israel seems keen to show resolve, putting the onus on Hamas to curb militants.

"(Israel's armed forces) decided to attack overnight in order to signal to Hamas that we will not suffer any strike on the south. And any shooting will meet a response, in order to restore quiet for the south soon," Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, the chief military spokesman, said on Army Radio.

"I assess that Hamas has no interest in seeing the situation deteriorate," he said. "Our goal is to maintain the quiet."

Commenting on the violence in Gaza, Richard Serry, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said it was of "paramount importance to refrain from violence."

He said in a statement that renewed violations of the ceasefire threatened to unravel Egyptian-brokered understandings that included an easing of Israel's blockade on the enclave.

Egypt mediated the November truce after fighting in which some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. Israel had launched that Gaza offensive, as it did a bigger campaign in 2008-09, with the declared aim of ending rocket fire.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement in 2007 after winning an election a year earlier. Palestinians want to establish a state in the enclave along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in a 1967 war.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Cooney)


View the original article here

Palestinian protester killed by Israeli army fire

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli forces shot and killed a teenage Palestinian protester during a clash in the West Bank late Wednesday, raising tensions already heightened by the death of a Palestinian prisoner and renewed fighting between Israel and Gaza militants.

The late night killing capped a day of rioting throughout the West Bank in protest at the prisoner's death from cancer and raised the likelihood of further unrest in the Palestinian territories Thursday.

Mohammed Ayyad, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said a 17-year-old Palestinian was killed in a clash between the Israeli army and Palestinian stone-throwers at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Tulkarem. He was hit by a bullet in the chest, Ayyad said. The spokesman did not provide the youth's name.

The Israeli military said several Palestinians hurled firebombs at a military post near Tulkarem, and soldiers at the post fired a live round at the protesters, hitting one. The army said it was reviewing the circumstances of the incident.

Early Wednesday, Palestinian militants launched several rockets into southern Israel and Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip in the heaviest exchange of fire between the sides since a cease-fire ended a major flare-up last year.

There were no casualties, but the violence nonetheless threatened to shatter the calm that has prevailed for more than four months. Israel's new defense minister issued a stern warning.

"We will not allow shooting of any sort (even sporadic) toward our citizens and our forces," Moshe Yaalon, a former military chief of staff, said in a statement.

By nightfall Wednesday, calm appeared to have returned on that front. A small al-Qaida-influenced group was suspected. The rocket fire coincided with unrest in the West Bank over the death of a Palestinian prisoner.

Yaalon said he holds the Islamic militant Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, responsible for all such attacks from the seaside strip.

Israel launched an offensive against Hamas last November in response to an increase in rocket fire from Gaza. During eight days of fighting, Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza, while Gaza militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. More than 160 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, and six Israelis were killed in the fighting before Egypt brokered a truce.

In recent weeks, there have been several rocket attacks, including one as President Barack Obama was visiting Israel two weeks ago. Overnight Wednesday, Israel responded for the first time by striking a pair of empty fields in northern and eastern Gaza.

Around the time Yaalon was speaking on Wednesday morning, two more rockets exploded in the Israeli border town of Sderot, according to police. Air raid sirens sounded, and people on their way to work and school took cover. No injuries were reported.

The Israeli military said a total of five rockets were fired within 24 hours, including two that exploded prematurely inside Gaza.

Under the cease-fire, Israel pledged to halt its policy of attacking militant leaders and to ease a blockade it imposed on Gaza after the Hamas takeover in 2007. Hamas pledged to halt rocket attacks on Israel. A number of smaller militant groups also operate in Gaza, including groups that draw inspiration from the al-Qaida global terror network.

U.N. Mideast envoy Robert Serry appealed for calm in a statement. "It is of paramount importance to refrain from violence in this tense atmosphere and for parties to work constructively in addressing the underlying issues," he said.

Ihab Ghussein, the Hamas government spokesman, accused Israel of using the airstrikes to "divert the attention" from unrest in Israeli prisons.

Palestinian prisoners have been rioting and hunger striking since a 64-year-old prisoner died of throat cancer on Tuesday. Palestinians blamed Israel for the man's death, saying he was not given proper medical care. The prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, was serving a life sentence for his role in a foiled attempt to bomb a busy cafe in Jerusalem in 2002.

Einav Shimron Grinbaum, spokeswoman of Israel's health ministry, said an autopsy performed Wednesday found a cancerous growth in Abu Hamdiyeh's throat and secondary cancerous growths in his neck, chest, lungs, liver, and spinal cord. She said hospital records showed he was a heavy smoker. The head of the Palestinian pathological institute also participated in the autopsy, she said.

At protests across the West Bank Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks and rolled burning tires at soldiers, prompting a response with tear gas, the Israeli military said.

In Ramallah, protesters waved pictures of Abu Hamdiyeh and chanted "with our souls and blood we will redeem the prisoner."

Israel's chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, accused the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, of exploiting the death to "resume popular protests."

Prisons Authority spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Abu Hamdiyeh was treated by Israeli specialists and died in a hospital in Beersheba.

Weizman said almost all of the 4,600 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel refused their breakfasts Wednesday morning in a symbolic act of protest.

In a separate development, Israel's defense minister issued a tough warning to battling forces in Syria, saying Israel would respond to any cross-border provocations.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said a mortar shell exploded on its side of the frontier in the Golan Heights. The military said its soldiers returned the fire and said they scored a direct hit.

"Israel has no intention of ignoring fire from Syria toward Israeli territory, incidental or not, and will respond with a firm hand," Yaalon said. "As far as we are concerned, the Syrian regime is to be held responsible for everything happening in its territory."

Israel, which has warily watched the fighting in Syria raging close to its frontier, is concerned that al-Qaida-linked groups fighting alongside the rebels could set their sights on Israel after the civil war ends.


View the original article here

Thứ Hai, 1 tháng 4, 2013

Palestinian PM hospitalized with abdominal pain

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A government spokesman says Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been hospitalized with an abdominal infection.

Jamal Zakout says the 61-year-old Fayyad felt pain in his abdomen Monday while at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Zakout says Fayyad went to Ramallah Hospital for tests and was admitted, but it was unclear whether he would spend the night.

A source close to Fayyad, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to discuss the medical diagnosis, says the prime minister had an infected pancreas.

Fayyad suffered a heart attack two years ago while visiting family in the United States.

Since 2007, Fayyad has been prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government that administers parts of the West Bank.


View the original article here

Thứ Sáu, 29 tháng 3, 2013

Palestinian journalist jailed for Abbas photo

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Two rights groups say a West Bank court has sentenced a Palestinian journalist to a year in prison for a Facebook page photo that portrays President Mahmoud Abbas as a traitor.

Abbas' Palestinian Authority has come under mounting criticism for stifling dissent. In particular, Abbas has been cracking down on the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The defendant in Thursday's ruling was Mamdouh Hamamreh, a reporter for the Hamas-linked Al-Quds TV.

Prosecutors say a photo montage on his Facebook page back in 2010 showed Abbas next to a TV villain. The villain was an informer for French colonial rulers and the photo caption read: "They're alike."

Hamamreh denied he posted the photo.

The groups Al-Haq and the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom confirmed the ruling.


View the original article here

Thứ Tư, 20 tháng 3, 2013

After Israeli backslapping, Obama faces Palestinian discontent

By Crispian Balmer and Steve Holland

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Barack Obama faces a stony reception when he travels to the West Bank on Thursday for talks with Palestinian leaders who accuse him of letting Israel ride rough-shod over their dream of statehood.

Obama has said he will not bring any new initiatives to try to revive long-dormant peace talks and has instead come to Israel and the Palestinian territories for simple consultations.

Arriving in Israel on Wednesday, the main focus of initial discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to be pressing regional concerns, primarily Iran's nuclear ambitions and the civil war in neighboring Syria.

After repeated run-ins with Netanyahu during Obama's first term in office, the mood between the two men appeared to be much warmer, angering Palestinians, who blame the 2010 collapse of U.S.-backed peace negotiations on the Israeli leader's expansion of Jewish settlements on land where they want their state.

Obama is to address the decades-old conflict in talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and also in a keynote speech just hours later to a large audience of carefully screened Israeli students in Jerusalem.

But after the lofty ambitions of his first term, when he appointed a special envoy to the Middle East on his very first day in charge and said peacemaking was a priority, it was clear that Obama has now set the bar significantly lower.

"I will consider this a success if, when I go back on Friday, I am able to say to myself I have a better understanding of what the constraints are," he told a joint news conference on Wednesday, standing alongside Netanyahu.

The three-day visit is Obama's first to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank since entering the White House in 2009, and the inaugural foreign trip of a second and final four-year term that began in January.

Sporadic protests flared in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this week, with Palestinians accusing Obama of not doing enough to halt Israeli settlement-building on land seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

In 2009, Obama bluntly told Israel it had to halt settlement construction, but he later backed away from the demand and made no mention of the enclaves on Wednesday.

Posters depicting Obama were defaced in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem earlier this week and anti-U.S. sentiment bubbled up on social media.

"Do Not Enter," said one poster put up on Facebook, showing Obama's face with a red line crossed through it. "The people of Palestine do not welcome you here."

BACK-SLAPPING

Obama was feted when he arrived at Tel Aviv airport on Wednesday, with Israeli leaders lining up to praise the U.S. president for his firm commitment to the security of the Jewish state and his pledge not to let Iran develop nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu, while citing what he described as Israel's right to defend itself, said effusively that he was "absolutely convinced" that Obama was determined to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Tehran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.

After four years of often icy relations with Netanyahu, the body language suddenly changed. Gone were the pursed lips and ill-disguised scowls. In came firm handshakes and back-slapping.

"Israel has no better friend than the United States of America," Netanyahu said, adding that he hoped his visit would help "turn the page" in relations with the Palestinians.

"Israel remains fully committed to peace and to the solution of two states for two peoples. We stretch out our hand in friendship to the Palestinian people," he added.

Watching from Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative center just outside Jerusalem, Abbas's allies accused Netanyahu of repeating empty rhetoric and said Obama showed no inclination to re-engage with an issue that confounded his predecessors.

"The primary purpose of this visit is Israeli security, Israeli-American relations and saying that the U.S. has its back," said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Obama will fly by helicopter the few miles from Jerusalem to Ramallah on Thursday morning, giving himself a birds' eye view of the walls and fences of the separation barrier between the two cities and of Israeli settlements on surrounding hilltops.

Before that, he will go to a museum in Jerusalem to see the Dead Sea Scrolls - ancient Jewish parchments discovered in the West Bank in the 1940s.

Israeli diplomats say that will help make amends to Israel for a speech Obama made in Cairo in 2009, when he appeared to argue the Jewish state derived its legitimacy from the Holocaust rather than an attachment to the land dating back to the Bible.

Obama will travel to Bethlehem on Friday to visit the Church of the Nativity, and will also lay a wreath on the grave in Jerusalem of Theodor Herzl, the Zionist visionary who died more than four decades before the 1948 founding of Israel.

The U.S. leader will then fly to neighboring Jordan, one of only two Arab states that has made peace with Israel.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Matt Spetalnick and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)


View the original article here

Chủ Nhật, 17 tháng 3, 2013

Palestinian lawmaker, mother of militants, dies

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A firebrand Palestinian lawmaker known as the "mother of martyrs" who championed her sons' attacks on Israelis has died.

Health official Ashraf Al-Kidra says lawmaker Mariam Farhat died Sunday in a Gaza hospital of health complications including lung ailments and kidney failure.

Farhat, who was 64, lost three sons in militant activities against Israelis.

In 2002, she recorded a farewell video with her 17-year-old son Mohammed, giving him her blessing the night before a shooting attack in a Jewish settlement. He killed five seminary students before he was shot dead by soldier.

Two other sons were killed by Israeli forces while they were preparing attacks, and another son is in an Israeli prison.

About 4,000 Palestinians attended her funeral, including Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.


View the original article here

Palestinian hunger striker exiled to Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - A hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner was exiled by Israel to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian officials said.

The deal involving Ayman Sharawneh, whose case had helped fuel Palestinian protests, could reduce friction ahead of Wednesday's two-day visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Israel and Palestinian territory.

Sharawneh, 37, from the Hebron area in the occupied West Bank, had signed an agreement to stay in Gaza for 10 years, according to Qadura Fares, head of an advocacy group for Palestinian prisoners.

Israel made no comment.

Sharawneh had been freed from an Israeli prison as part of a 2011 swap for an Israeli soldier who was held for more than five years in Gaza, then arrested again last year.

He had joined other prisoners in intermittently refusing food in protest against their being jailed without trial.

Sharawneh, who had been treated in Israeli hospitals during his hunger strikes, was driven into Gaza in an ambulance through the high-security Erez Crossing under cover of darkness.

He was admitted to the main hospital in Gaza City, where he received a hero's welcome - dozens of supporters greeting him with green and white Hamas flags.

A pro-Hamas prisoners' association said Sharawneh was being admitted to an intensive care unit.

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government, praised Sharawneh as a "hero prisoner."

He had originally been jailed in 2002 during a Palestinian uprising. After his rearrest, he was among four prisoners who began hunger strikes in protest.

The condition of those inmates and the death of another detainee helped fuel a string of protests in which dozens were injured across the West Bank. Two of the other inmates have since stopped their hunger strikes after a promise to free them.

Both sides have sought to calm the atmosphere ahead of what will be Obama's first visit as president, for talks expected to address peace negotiations frozen since late 2010 after disputes over Jewish settlement building.

Israel holds 178 Palestinians as "administrative" detainees - jailed without trial as suspected militants for renewable three to six-month terms based on classified evidence.

Qadoura stressed that Shawarneh had signed onto the deal of his own accord. Palestinian authorities object to deportations from land they seek for a state.

(Editing by Matthew Tostevin)


View the original article here

Palestinian ends hunger strike in deal

EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip (AP) — A freed Palestinian prisoner was given a hero's welcome in the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening after ending his hunger strike in an Israeli jail and agreeing to a plea bargain that will confine him to the Hamas-run territory for the next 10 years.

After his release from Israeli custody, Ayman Sharawneh arrived at the Erez Crossing in an ambulance with its siren blaring and red lights flashing as dozens of TV cameramen and photographers precariously gathered around the vehicle as it crossed into Gaza. Dozens of Palestinians waved national flags and chanted slogans calling for freedom.

Sharawneh, 53, appeared weak, shaky and shrunken, and was taken to a hospital in Gaza City.

Sharawneh, a resident of the West Bank, had been refusing food since last July to protest his incarceration. His lawyer, Jawad Bulous, said Sharawneh accepted the offer of confinement to Gaza, fearing he would be sent to prison for decades in a military court hearing set for Monday.

"The occupation committed two crimes," Sharawneh said, referring to Israel. "Arresting me, and then keeping me away from my family. But in Gaza, I am also with my family," he said, his voice croaking as he spoke from his hospital bed.

Sharawneh, who was serving a 38-year prison sentence for participating in militant attacks, was among about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners freed in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held for five years by Hamas militants in Gaza.

In one attack, he detonated an explosives-filled handbag in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, wounding more than a dozen people. He was also involved in a kidnapping attempt, according to Israel's Shin Bet security service.

He was arrested again in January 2012 after being accused of violating the terms of his release by making contact with members of the militant Islamic group Hamas. The military court could have ordered him to serve out the remainder of his original sentence.

Sharawneh began his hunger strike in July but halted it for a month, believing at the time he would be released.

His confinement to Gaza means he will be cut off from his family. It is difficult for Palestinians in the West Bank to obtain permission from Israeli military authorities to cross Israel to enter Gaza. The West Bank flanks Israel's east, while Hamas-ruled Gaza borders Israel in the southwest.

Even so, Sharawneh's mother said she was pleased. "It doesn't matter if he goes to Gaza. To be freed is the most important thing," said Zahra Sharawneh. "I hope the people of Gaza greet him and give him the care that he needs."

The Shin Bet said in a statement Sunday that Sharawneh could leave Gaza after the 10-year period "if he hasn't returned to terror activity."

Sharawneh was among four Palestinian prisoners who have been on a long-term hunger strike.

Another, Samer Issawi, has been on a hunger strike for over seven months. He began refusing food in August, when he was detained. He has taken nutrients in a hospital drip from time to time to stay alive, although his health condition is considered grave.

Issawi was sentenced to 26 years in prison for his involvement in a series of shooting attacks targeting Israeli police cars and students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Issawi was also freed as part of the 2011 prisoner exchange and was re-arrested for violating his release conditions.

The two other hunger strikers, Tarek Qaadan and Jafar Ezzeldeen, are in administrative detention, a system where prisoners can be held indefinitely without being charged, in three-month renewable periods. They began refusing food when they were detained over four months ago.

Israeli security officials suspect the two men are members of the violent Palestinian group Islamic Jihad and were overseeing militant activity, but neither has been charged.

About 4,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons for crimes ranging from throwing rocks at soldiers to deadly militant attacks. Palestinians see them as fighting for their national liberation, while Israelis widely regard them as terrorists.

West Bank protests demanding their release have repeatedly turned violent in recent weeks.

____

Associated Press writer Diaa Hadid in Gaza City contributed to this report.


View the original article here

Thứ Ba, 12 tháng 3, 2013

Israel troops shoot to death Palestinian protester

Mar 11 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 2. Tiger Woods $2,671,600 3. Matt Kuchar $2,055,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,491,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 11. Charles Howell III $1,238,219 12. Brian Gay $1,171,721 13. Jason Day $1,080,664 14. Chris Kirk $1,004,053 15. Keegan Bradley $976,993 16. Josh Teater $883,229 17. Bill Haas $876,800 18. Scott Piercy $868,592 19. ...


View the original article here

Thứ Hai, 11 tháng 3, 2013

UN: Palestinian militants likely killed Gaza baby

JERUSALEM (AP) — A U.N. report indicates an errant Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, likely killed the baby of a BBC reporter during fighting in the Hamas-ruled territory last November.

The death of Omar al-Masharawi, the 11-month-old son of BBC stringer Jihad al-Masharawi, became a symbol of what Palestinians see as Israeli aggression during eight days of fighting that killed more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis. A woman was killed alongside the baby.

Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes to stop Palestinian rocket salvos.

The U.N. office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a March 6 report that the incident was caused by "what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel."

Hamas had no response Monday. BBC officials were not immediately available for comment.


View the original article here

Thứ Sáu, 1 tháng 3, 2013

Palestinian prime minister evacuated from protest

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was evacuated after inhaling tear gas on Friday during a demonstration in the West Bank against Israel's security barrier, and protesters clashed with Israeli troops at other rallies held to support Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes.

Fayyad was participating in a demonstration in the West Bank village of Bilin when Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at protesters who were marking eight years of protests against the barrier, snaking through the West Bank, that Israel said it built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians call the barrier a land grab as it juts into the West Bank and cuts them off from their land in some places.

Fayyad inhaled the tear gas while speaking in support of the villagers' weekly protests. He coughed and choked, forcing him to stop speaking and his aides removed him from the area. He was treated at the scene.

Elsewhere across the West Bank, Palestinians continued several days of protests in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes in Israeli jails. Palestinians have warned of a backlash if any of them die.

Israel's military said hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli soldiers. Mohammed Samhan of the Red Crescent said dozens of protesters were treated for injuries caused by rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation.


View the original article here

Thứ Sáu, 22 tháng 2, 2013

Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli troops

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Hundreds of Palestinian protesters are squaring off against Israeli security forces in the West Bank at a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Some 2,000 people gathered at the Beitunia military checkpoint on Thursday, hoping to march to a nearby military prison. When the military prevented them from proceeding, protesters began throwing stones and burning tires. Israeli soldiers are responding with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The Israeli military estimates the crowd size at about 300 people and says it is using nonlethal means to break up what it calls a violent riot.

Palestinians have staged protests across the West Bank all week in solidarity with the 4,500 prisoners held by Israel. They consider the prisoners heroes in a struggle against Israeli occupation.


View the original article here