NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]sraeli forces have killed 17 Palestinians and injured more than 900 during seven consecutive days of heightened attacks across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and inside present-day Israel. On Friday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed six Palestinians and injured close to 70 during clashes at Gaza’s boundary with Israel, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, photojournalist Ezz Zanoun said, “It is very dangerous here … They always shoot at the border, but it’s much worse today than usual.”
The video below shows unarmed Palestinian protesters, mostly youth, throwing stones at the boundary with Israel. A shot can be heard as Israeli forces fired into the crowd.
Anadoulu News Agency also tweeted video footage of a Palestinian protester after he was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
In Afula, a city in northern Israel, police officers shot a Palestinian woman, Israa Abed, multiple times while her hands were up. Israeli media claims that she was wielding a knife and attempted to stab a bus driver, but videos show that Abed posed no threat.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, a 19-year-old Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba after he reportedly stabbed an Israeli police officer.
Meanwhile, an Israeli man stabbed four Palestinians in Dimona, a city in southern Israel. The man was not shot on the spot, but rather taken in for questioning by Israeli police. Journalist Dan Cohen tweeted a video of the aftermath of one of the attacks.
Attacks across the West Bank
Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI) released a report on Thursday stating that Israeli forces and settlers have attacked and injured approximately 50 Palestinian children in the last week.
“A growing number of Palestinian children and their families live in West Bank villages and towns hemmed in by expanding and often violent Israeli settler communities. Israeli soldiers, police, and private security firms protect settler populations at the expense of Palestinian civilians,” DCI-P stated.
“The failure of Israeli authorities to properly investigate and hold perpetrators accountable provides Israeli forces with tacit approval to inflict maximum harm,” the group added.
In the West Bank town of Beit Ommar, at least 17 Palestinians were injured by invading Israeli forces on Friday afternoon, according to Ma’an News Agency. They included three youths who were shot with live ammunition. Israeli soldiers also arrested and detained five youths from the town, aged between 11 and 20 years old.
Ma’an also reported that Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes and destroyed property, while Israeli forces continued to fire tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians protesting the army’s invasion in nearby Hebron.
Israeli forces and settlers also attacked and injured Palestinians in the West Bank cities and towns of Nablus, Kufr Qaddoum, Beit Fajjar, Beit Furik and in al-Bireh, where a video shows a Palestinian protester being deliberately run over by a heavily armored Israeli military jeep but managing to rise to his feet.
Israeli forces also continued to invade Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday.
Ma’an News Agency tweeted that Israeli forces shot tear gas canisters at the funeral tent where friends and relatives mourned 20-year-old Wissam Faraj, who was shot and killed on Thursday in Shuafat refugee camp.
Journalist Rebecca Pierce photographed Israeli police strip-searching a Palestinian university student in Jerusalem’s Old City. And in Nazareth, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in solidarity with the uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza, as this video by Agence France Presse shows:
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor of The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).
