Thousands of Palestinian protesters on Tuesday took part in a “day of rage” across the occupied West Bank, with some groups clashing with Israeli forces to protest the US announcement that it no longer believes Israeli settlements breach international law.
About 2,000 people gathered by midday in the city of Ramallah, where they set ablaze posters of US President Donald Trump, as well as the Israeli and US national flags.
Schools, universities and government offices were closed, and rallies were also being held in other West Bank cities.
Photo: AFP
“The biased American policy toward Israel, and the American support of the Israeli settlements and the Israeli occupation, leaves us with only one option: To go back to resistance,” Mahmoud Aloul, an official with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, told the crowd in Ramallah.
Protesters held signs that read: “Trump to impeachment, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to jail, the occupation will go and we will remain on our land.”
At Israeli checkpoints near Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, dozens of protesters threw stones at Israeli forces who responded with tear gas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Later in the evening, the Israeli military said that it identified two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel.
One was intercepted by an Iron Dome missile battery. It was the second such attack in as many days by Palestinian militants, and Israeli aircraft retaliated with attacks on several Hamas sites in Gaza, but there were no reports of injuries.
The protests came just hours after the death of a Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody following a battle with cancer.
Organizers had said that the demonstrations — which were planned before his death — would also call for the release of Sami Abu Diak, 35, to allow him to die at his family’s side. Israeli officials denied the request.
Organized by Fatah, Tuesday’s “day of rage” protested last week’s announcement by the Trump administration on Israeli settlements.
The decision upended four decades of US policy and embraced a hardline Israeli view at the expense of the Palestinian quest for statehood.
Israeli leaders welcomed the US decision, while the Palestinians and most of the world have said that the settlements are illegal and undermine hopes for a two-state solution by gobbling up land sought by the Palestinians.
Israel has said that the fate of the West Bank settlements should be determined in negotiations, even as it steadily expands the settlements.
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and began settling the conquered territory.
Today, about 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the two areas, which are both claimed by the Palestinians for their state.
Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US was repudiating a 1978 legal opinion by the US Department of State that had been the basis for more than 40 years of carefully worded US opposition to settlement construction.
Abu Diak died in an Israeli hospital early on Tuesday, the Israel Prison Service said.
He was serving three life sentences for voluntary manslaughter and kidnapping, among other charges, the service said in a statement.
He was linked to the armed wing of Fatah and was arrested in the early 2000s, during the second Palestinian uprising. He was allegedly involved in the killing of three Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israeli security forces.
The Palestinian Authority had reached out to European countries and the Red Cross to apply pressure on Israel to release him.
Previous deaths of terminally ill Palestinian prisoners have sparked protests and accusations of medical negligence on the part of Israeli authorities.
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