Days of Palestine – Ramallah
At least fifty-one Palestinians were injured by Israeli occupation forces Friday in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, local sources reported.
They said that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) cracked down on Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and injured 42.
They added that heavily-armed IOF stormed the mosque compound via the heavily-guarded Bab al-Maghariba Gate, occupied the rooftops of several buildings, and fired rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards the worshippers, injuring 42.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that its medics provided treatment to 42 people, mostly with upper-body injuries, and transferred 22 of them to al-Makassed Hospital.
It confirmed that IOF initially denied medics access into the compound and brutally assaulted a medic, inflicting bruises across his body.
The Israeli occupation authorities have beefed up IOF deployments in Jerusalem with some 3,000 soldiers ahead of Ramadan’s last Friday prayers.
Meanwhile, at least nine Palestinians were injured by Israeli occupation forces today during the weekly protest against Israeli settlement construction in the village of Kafr Qaddum, in the West Bank province of Qalqilia.
Morad Shtewi, a local anti-occupation activist, said that IOF attacked the protesters with rubber-coated rounds and tear gas canisters, injuring nine of them with rubber-coated rounds, including two children, and causing many cases of suffocation from gas inhalation.
All of the injured protesters were treated at the scene of the clashes.
Meantime, dozens of Palestinian protesters suffered suffocation from teargas inhalation after Israeli occupation forces attacked the weekly anti-colonization protest in the village of Beit Dajan, in the West Bank province of Nablus.
For many years, villagers from Kafr Qaddum and neighboring villages have been protesting every Friday against illegal Israeli settlement construction.
Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only illegal settlements across the occupied Palestinian Lands in violation of international law.
Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads, various other physical obstructions, and the 70-kilometer-long apartheid wall.
The past Fridays of Ramadan saw violent confrontations between Palestinians and police reminiscent of the 2021 Ramadan tensions and May violence over Israeli settler takeover of Palestinian property in Sheikh Jarrah and encroachments upon the mosque compound, culminating in the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and large-scale protests among Palestinian citizens of Israel.
During the 2021 Ramadan month, Jerusalem saw protests and night-time confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers, with tensions mounting over the police decision to ban people from sitting on the stairs outside Bab al-Amoud under the guise of implementing the coronavirus restrictions, and its decision to disconnect the power supply to the call to prayer at the mosque compound.
The tensions further simmered following the forced expulsions of Palestinian families from their houses in Sheikh Jarrah.
For many Palestinians in Jerusalem and across the occupied Palestinian territory, Ramadan is directly connected to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound houses both the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque and is considered the third holiest site in Islam.
Al-Aqsa is located in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
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