Israeli troops open fire on Palestinians
Source: AFP July 25, 2008 NILIN - Seven protesters and two soldiers were hurt on Thursday near the occupied West Bank village of Nilin in the latest of regular demonstration against Israel’s construction of a separation barrier, Palestinian medics said.
An AFP photographer witnessed soldiers open fire on demonstrators with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas as they tried to approach the construction site, some of them throwing stones.
All of the demonstrators hurt were hit by the bullets, while an officer and a border guard were hit by stones, the medics said.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops arrested five Palestinians and wounded three others in an operation in the southern West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian police and medics said.
An Israeli army spokesman said a patrol near Beit Ummar village, between Hebron and Bethlehem, had been attacked by several people, with one Molotov cocktail and several rocks thrown. He said eight people were arrested, adding that he had no knowledge of anyone being hurt.
Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon is “deeply concerned” about Israel’s plan to expand a settlement in the occupied West Bank and renews his call to the Jewish state to freeze all settlement activity, his spokeswoman said Thursday.
“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about the announcement today of the initial approval by the Ministry of Defence of 20 residential units in the Israeli military post of Maskiyot in the West Bank,” Michele Montas told a Press briefing. In a statement, she recalled that Ban had repeatedly stressed that “settlement construction or expansion is contrary to international law and Israel’s commitments under the roadmap and the Annapolis process. “ “The Secretary-General urges Israel to heed the call of the (Middle East peace) Quartet to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, and to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001,” she added. “We are currently in the process of constructing 20 housing units in the Jordan Valley settlement of Maskiot,” a senior Israeli Defence Ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Local authorities in the Jordan Valley on Wednesday published a tender for the construction, he said, but the move still requires the final go-ahead from Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The new decision would join hundreds of housing units the Israeli government has approved in the West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem, since the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians last November as part of the US-sponsored Annapolis process.
But while those units are in large settlement blocs and parts of east Jerusalem that Israel wishes to keep under its control in any peace deal, the Jordan Valley does not fall under such a category.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would stick to its commitment not to expand settlements beyond their existing boundaries.