Severe clashes erupted in Azzoun village, east of Qalqilia, after the residents held their Friday prayers in lands east of the village that Israeli is trying to annex. One youth was seriously injured in the head.
Israeli soldier fired live ammunition against the protestors, a local source in the village reported. A village resident identified as Sa’id Sayel Sweidan, 17, sustained a live round in his head.
Sweidan was transferred first to a UN hospital in Qalqilia, then to a hospital in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
The Israeli army was intensively present in the area beginning in the early morning hours, in an attempt to bar the residents from reaching their annexed orchards.
The Israeli government plans to annex farmlands east of Qalqilia in order to expand the settlement of Maale Shamron, in order to make it part of a settlement bloc in the area which includes the settlements of Qarneh Sharon, Jenat Shamron, Emanuel, and the Ediret Industrial Area, plus the Zoher settlement boc.
Israeli bulldozers started two weeks ago to uproot farmlands in Azzoun area in order to construct the Separation Wall section in the area. Orchards which belong to the Islamic Waqf department were also bulldozed and its trees were uprooted.
