Occupation soldiers clashed with hundreds of Israeli peace activists trying to enter the West Bank Palestinian town of Huwara on a solidarity visit following a deadly settlers’ pogrom there earlier in the week. Four protesters who tried to go around the army roadblock were detained.
Footage from the scene on Friday morning, showed troops scuffling with marchers, among them a former Hadash MK and leading Communist Party of Israel member, Dov Khenin, and former MK Mossi Raz (Meretz). In several cases stun grenades were thrown by soldiers. In one video soldiers can be seen repeatedly pushing former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg until he falls to the ground. Earlier the military stopped 10 buses carrying peace activists from reaching Huwara. The activists then tried to proceed on foot from the nearby Tapuah junction to Huwara.
The activists later got off their vehicles and began marching toward the town, many of them carrying signs reading “End Jewish terror” and “Palestinian lives matter.” However, they were again blocked by the occupation army. Protest organizers in a statement called the military order a form of “collective punishment of the victims of the settlers’ pogrom.”
Police against Israeli protesters in Sheikh Jarrah, Friday evening, March 3, 2023 (Photo: Free Jerusalem)
Four Israeli peace activists were injured and eight arrested on Friday evening in a protest against eviction of Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah. The police used clubs and a noxious substance known as “skunk water” to disperse the activists protesting the pending eviction of a family from their home in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.
A protest Monday evening against settlers’ Huwara pogrom in the occupied West Bank a day earlier blocked a major highway in Tel Aviv, ending with three arrests. More than 1,000 protesters turned out Monday night in Tel Aviv, and other “emergency protests against the “settler government lighting the country on fire,” were held in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Nazareth, Herzliya, Kufr Qara, Shefa-Amr, Ra’anana junction, Rehovot, Mishmar Hayarden and Mitzpe Ramon. Tonight, will be held another protest in the city of Sakhnin.
Protesters on Monday in Tel Aviv and elsewhere waved Palestinian and red flags and sported placards with anti-occupation messages, including “the settler government is bad for all of us”, “there is no democracy with occupation” and “there is no democracy without freedom,” as well as messages of solidarity with Huwara.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=30866