Israeli troops clash with Palestinians protesting new settlement

Beita, West Bank, Aug 27 (EFE) Israeli soldiers clashed here Friday with Palestinian villagers during a protest against an unauthorized Jewish settlement under construction nearby.

Palestinian medics carried at least one demonstrator away on a stretcher.

Troops used tear gas against the protesters and some of the Palestinian youths hurled the canisters back at the Israeli forces.

Work on the Eviatar settlement began in May, triggering a wave of protests by Palestinians at the site 9 km (5.6 mi) south of Nablus, the second-most-populous city in the West Bank.

And though the Israeli government officially regards the “outpost” as illegal, the troops it has deployed to defend Eviatar have fatally shot more than half-a-dozen protesters and injured scores of others.

Several of the protesters killed were teenagers and the United Nations said in June that 100 Palestinians had been wounded by live rounds fired from the guns of Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians draw comparisons between the situation in Beita with the evictions of Arabs from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, to make the properties available to Jewish settlers.

Disturbances in and around Sheikh Jarrah played a role in sparking the eruption in May of violence between Israel and Palestinian armed factions that left nearly 250 people dead in Gaza and a dozen more in Israel. EFE ab/dr