Footage shot by social media activists shows Israeli forces chasing an ambulance of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in the occupied West Bank in order to forcibly pull out an injured Palestinian from the vehicle and arrest him.
Faraan: The footage shows Israeli soldiers running after the ambulance and trying to take by force a Palestinian civilian who was injured during a protest in al-Arroub refugee camp, located 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) south of Bethlehem, against the Tel Aviv regime’s demolition and land expropriation policies.
Israeli soldiers attempted to reach the injured civilian, however, Palestinian aid worker managed to speed off and got away from the scene. More than 130 Palestinian protesters were injured on Friday during clashes with Israeli soldiers in the northern part of the West Bank.
Palestinian eyewitnesses said the fierce clashes broke out near the villages of Beita and Beit Dajan, located to the south and east of Nablus respectively, and near the village of Kafr Qaddum, east of the city of Qaqilya. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement that at least 128 Palestinian demonstrators were injured, including 36 by rubber bullets fired by Israeli soldiers. The others suffered from inhaling the tear gas, the medics added.
Israel occupied East al-Quds, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War in 1967. It later had to withdraw from Gaza. More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank. All the settlements are illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the settlement activities in several resolutions. The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has also called for intensified resistance as the sole way to counter Israeli acts of aggression.
“There is no way to deter the [Israeli] occupation except by more force,” the national relations department of Hamas in the West Bank said in a statement on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian Information Center. The statement said the strongest response to the Israeli terrorism would be to intensify resistance and inflict heavy losses on Israeli forces during their raids on the Palestinian cities. The statement also condemned the recent murder of three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as a “serious” escalation that should be met with intensified resistance. The three Palestinians were killed at the hands of Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.